my first love showed up in a dream the night before her funeral

okay I wasn't going to post this but it's been messing with me so here we go.

I'm 21, gay, and I've only ever been to two funerals for people outside my family. this is the story of one of them.

so I'm a massive gamer. normal night, just me on Steam clicking away at Assassin's Creed 4 (genuinely great btw, AC2 and 3 made me want to die, Ubisoft you absolute clowns, but 4?? 4 goes hard). fall asleep sometime after 1am.

now here's the thing about me. I basically never remember my dreams. I sleep like a corpse, completely silent and still, people genuinely think I'm dead when I'm sleeping. once I'm out I'm OUT for 8+ hours no matter what.

but that night I had a dream.

I'm walking with some girl. her face is SO familiar, like I KNOW I know this person, but my brain keeps rewinding and hitting nothing. so I go "who are you?" and she just. smiles. doesn't say a word.

then she writes a phone number on a piece of paper and hands it to me.

the beginning and end of the dream are blurry but that part was crystal clear. I woke up at 7am with the number burned into my brain.

I figured calling at 7am would be insane so I waited until like 1pm. just. called a random number from a dream. cold.

"h-hello?"

"who is this?"

"sorry who am I speaking with? I'm [name] and..."

the most awkward phone call of my life I wanted to crawl out of my own skin.

turns out?? it was K, a girl I went to elementary school with. I told her I got her number in a dream and asked if that meant anything to her.

she said meet me right now.

so we meet up and she tells me. yesterday they started the funeral for P.

I didn't recognize the name at first. she showed me a photo.

oh.

OH.

that was my first girlfriend. 6th grade. that sweet stupid puppy-love era. we "dated" the way 12-year-olds do, then I got a phone in middle school and we just... stopped talking. drifted. that was it.

and now she's gone. traffic accident.

and THEN K tells me the part that broke my brain. the night before the accident, P and K had hung out. and out of nowhere P started talking about me. K barely remembered my name at that point (fair honestly) but P said something like... the boys she dated in her 20s didn't make her think back as much as her 6th grade boyfriend did sometimes.

she got nostalgic. they drank.

and then the next day she died.

so that evening I went to the funeral hall. her parents were crying. I bowed in front of the portrait photo with incense and flowers, the whole thing. and I'm standing there looking at her memorial photo and the face from my dream just. clicked.

it was her.

I don't believe in ghosts. I really don't. but I genuinely don't know what to call that night.

maybe she wanted to say goodbye.