Inside the PET machine I had two dreams.  This was the first of them:

I dreamed I saw a parade of people.  Faces I’ve known from many different times and places were one after the other passing before me.  There was my father carrying me through the Swedish forest on his back; my sisters wrapped up in towels on a Gotland beach; there was  Diane waiting for our first date in Stockholm; Saga being born in the middle of a January snowstorm; students of all nationalities attentively listening to me (while their classmates were busy sleeping in the back).  There was a string of old girlfriends too — all happy now, apparently in a forgiving mood.  I suddenly saw myself on the Red Square, on the Washington Mall, in a small restaurant in Arezzo; going up the Mekong River with Diane and the children; eating doufu in a Taiwanese street market together with smiling colleagues.

What a blessed life, I thought.  What an incredibly lucky and blessed life.  And it was all so indescribably beautiful. The churning and thumping of the PET machine turned into a march which rose and crescendoed as we all walked off together, all the people, all the memories.  All happy now, all blessed.

Then the machine suddenly stopped and I woke up inside the tunnel.

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