Last year at this exact time, I was awakened by the dream below. I’m sharing it with you now because just like it is today, it was Día de los Muertos when this dream first streamed in. If you have not yet celebrated your ancestors this weekend, this dream may convince you to start! No pressure… but you still have time. The Mexican holiday started yesterday and lasts until midnight tonight!

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Last November, I dreamt that my friend Lesley gave me a simple white T-shirt as a gift.

Without looking at it, I told her I loved it and then promptly tossed it aside. I was already wearing a shirt—a bright green one.   

But Lesley insisted I try her gift on. “See how it fits,” she said.

Not wanting to offend, I took my green T-shirt off and put the white one she had gifted me back on. It fit perfectly.

But then, in the kind of logic that only exists in dreams, I remembered I was going to a yoga class and didn’t want to get my new shirt sweaty. So, I put my old green one back on again.

Lesley was not having it! She handed me the white shirt and insisted I wear it.

It wasn’t like her to be so pushy. Like me, she had lost a son, so the shirts we wear are the least of our concerns. But from the day we were introduced to each other, we had felt a soul connection. So, if this white T-shirt was that important to her, I’d wear it to yoga.

As I was taking my green shirt off and putting the new one on again, however, I started wondering why she was so obsessed with it.

What’s the big deal about this T-shirt? I wondered.

For the first time in the entire dream, I looked down and saw three words written in generic black font on the front of it:  

“The Grateful Dead”

Just reading those three words woke me up at 5:50 a.m. and prompted me to write the dream down in the dream journal I keep next to my bed. Still half-asleep, the dream didn’t resonate or make much sense to me. The Grateful Dead are one of my least favorite bands (sorry!) and the way the words were written didn’t carry the energy of music at all. I didn’t see or feel a Jerry Garcia connection there.

When I rolled out of bed an hour later and thought about my day, I realized it was the morning of November 3rd— Día de los Muertos had officially ended. Over the weekend, my girlfriends and I (including Lesley) had built an altar at my house and celebrated our ancestors all together. Now that the holiday had passed, it was time to take it down. 

That’s when it struck me: the white T-shirt in my dream hadn’t been a gift from Lesley at all. It was a message from my ancestors, and likely hers too, thanking me for honoring and remembering them over the holiday. The idea that my ancestors might be celebrating with Lesley’s ancestors, and even those related to all my other guests that night, gave me goosebumps and filled my heart.

So I started thinking, Maybe Día de los Muertos really is some kind of portal between worlds. And maybe those three words—“The Grateful Dead”—were written in generic font on that plain white T-shirt precisely so I wouldn’t confuse their meaning with the band. 

After all, the color white in dreams often represents divine presence, according to Google’s AI Overview. 😇

I have since learned that the term “Grateful Dead” comes from folklore, referring to thankful spirits who return to help those who helped them.

So I like to think that’s what the Grateful Dead really are…the ones who go ahead and find ways to visit and let us know they’re never really gone. 

I know this sounds like the kind of dream I could make up. But I promise it’s true.

And today feels like the perfect day to share it with you.