You don't go back to sleep after a dream like that, you just don't. It was a weird melange of things real, things that could be real and things that were just plain ridiculous.

The happy gathering of friends was just like it was last night, except for a strange visitor. This strange visitor had a real problem. She had severe emotional pain and she didn't want to be feeling it any more. She walked swaggering into the gathering with a pint of brandy, taking a swig every now and then, addressing the bottle as her 'friend'. ''No,'' several address her harshly, ''That is NOT your friend, that will hurt you!''

It reminded me partly of the times when we had to discourage Laura from hard drink, ''You KNOW that will weaken your heart, you REALLY don't want to do that . . .'' Now, to Laura's credit, at least a year before she died, she did shun hard liquor. Now, she used to like her peach brandy on occasion or a 'black russian', but she did stay far away from that in the last year(s) of her life. The strongest thing she'd have was port when Anton visited, to her credit. And Laura never talked like the person in that dream, though she did have plenty of pains she wanted to be not aware of. The not being able to breath at night was scary. The sleeping pills the doctor gave her enabled her to at least have a good night's sleep until 4:30am, when she'd wake up unable to breath and needed to hack up the goop in her lungs.

Yes, Laura was a warrior 'til the end, but I don't think the dream was about her. Our visitor, as it turned out, had a worse problem than imbibing hard liquor to excess. When a couple of us trailed behind her to her motel room, we found the brandy was only an accompanient to a much worse problem: GLUE sniffing!

This part of the dream may have been inspired by the tale of a young man who'd totally wasted his brain on PAINT sniffing. However, this lady sniffed glue, and in the bizarreness that is pure dream, she was shooting Elmer's glue up her nose, like some people shoot Dristan! She had no shame, though, and soon stumbled back to the gathering, holding both her bottle of brandy AND her Elmer's glue bottle.

Everyone watches her in complete helpless horror. ''I'm tired of feeling pain, I DON'T want to feel any more pain,'' the woman assured us, as we all stared in open mouthed horror. With that, she took one more draw on the bottle of white substance, and promptly fell to the floor, having lost consciousness, and probably her life, too.

We're all so horrified, we can't even breathe, until I speak first. Hardened realist that I am, I say plainly, ''Well, she's not feeling any pain, now!'' Though I'm truly saddened as the rest, who are all staring with wide open mouths, and wide open eyes.

I woke with that utter complete sense of horror still so vivid. And you can't go back to sleep after something like that. At least I can't.

''Well, she's not feeling any pain, now!'' Maybe this dream IS a little about Laura. When Julia and I got home from the happy gathering, I felt of an odd mood to gaze upon the urn which holds Laura's ashes and address her, ''You missed a good time, Laura. You would have had fun. Though I know you'd always told us how you wanted us to get on with life after you died, and start having fun as soon as we could. Well, we missed you. We had fun, but we missed you!'' And I sort of saluted the urn, and waved it a kiss.

And maybe this dream IS about Laura, the true acknowledgement that Laura ISN'T feeling any pain, and how much she'd suffered. Those fears she had about her heart, when ever it acted up, were firmly based in reality. I guess I'd sort of hoped they were part hypochrondric. But they weren't. She knew when her heart skipped out or didn't beat. A couple of nights before that Sunday's sad event, she'd had to get out of the heat and sit down someplace cool. We walked to the car, and got the air conditioning on to full blast, until she wasn't feeling woozy anymore. At the time, I'd regarded her words as exaggeration, ''You almost lost me there,'' she announced, after her heart finally settled down. It wasn't until we'd gotten to the cool restaurant, and she'd had a few swallows of cabernet saugvignon, that she'd felt herself. Dang Laura, she was always losing her nitro pills, and rarely had them when she needed them.

She should have had one of those necklace pendants with the nitro vial in it, but she would have hated the reminder of her mortality. As it is, she hated the sight of her many pill bottles and puffers, and had them all stashed away, in a drawer, out of sight.

''Well, she's not feeling any pain, now!'' Yes, this dream is that much about Laura. And no surprise, really. It's the one month anniversary of her death.

Am I not allowed to grieve? At work Thursday morning, I was again feeling morose. No one had ever prepared me, the emotions of mourning are not all lofty tears of missing the loved one. Some times we experience the vilest and bizarrest emotions. Wednesday, it was a deeply self pitying seething ennui. Thursday, it was more subtle, but it was definitely noticeable. Muy malcontento, I was. At this point, a customer came in wearing a T-shirt with the message ''Art Heals''. The front of the shirt spoke of an art program to help hurting children. And the back simply had a softly rainbow hued heart, with the slogan ''Art Heals''.

Upon seeing those words, my tears rushed to the surface in an upheavel, and I went to the bathroom quickly. ''Do I not have the right to grieve?'' I cried, and sobbed. ''It's only been a month. Just you wait, C__________, until YOUR husband dies! It's not like losing a brother, just you wait. And you will find out, someday. Maybe THEN you'll understand!'' I cried. ''Art Heals? Oh, I need some healing now,'' and I cried some more. ''To be a great artist, you must suffer,'' the words of my art teacher, Sharlene Kassiday, came back to haunt. ''Shall I then be great, will this pain make me great?'' I inquired of the fates. Hard to say, but art does, indeed, heal. I have come to these pages so many times, and the art of it works its magic, and I am renewed somehow for my time here.

And, so, once again, friends, and you ARE my friend if you read these words, art has worked its magic on me. Grateful, I am, to the muse which leads me here each day. Grateful, I am, to the Mystery, which leads me here. Greatness, I do not know, perhaps, but HEALING, yes, that I know. To whatever fate on whose anvil I am the molten steel, being pounded now into that which I will later become, I pray.

I pray for all those children who need that healing art. I pray for all the artists, all the visionaries whose words and images are left with us to ponder. I pray for THEM, as their own white hot molten steel of their souls are forged, and from this pain, comes so much art. I turn my head heavenward, as if one of the choir, and I feel the good, deep strains come forth from my lungs, and I sing.

I am glad for my chance to sing.