When I was a little girl I told my great grandmother, who helped take care of me, that someday I would clean her house like she cleaned mine. As I grew up she would occasionally ask me when I intended to uphold my end of the bargain.

She passed away a few years ago, and while I was very saddened by the loss, to the point of getting a tattoo in her honour, I moved through the grieving process relatively quickly.

Death is a natural part of life, especially for someone who had lived as long as her.

Time passed and I found I didn’t think of her all too often. My life was busy and in a few years I was pregnant with my first child. Almost immediately after conceiving my dreams took on a life of their own. One recurring theme was my great-grandmother randomly popping up. I had never dreamed of her before.

These dreams were often typical first-time-mother dreams, like trying to take care of a strange baby or finding babies alone and in need of love. I would nurture the baby, but often when I looked away they would disappear and turn into my great-grandmother. She would just show up, uninvited, as if she had always been there.

Once, in a moment of lucidity, I asked her what she was doing in my dream, and she simply replied that she was visiting someone.

I began to suspect my great-grandmother was going to reincarnate as my child.

Now I won’t know if my theory is correct until I return to the spirit realm, and I don’t feel confident in saying that my child does carry the soul of my deceased relative. I’ve been secretly waiting for some unexplainable sign, like my child recognizing some trinkets from my great-grandmother’s house, but life is not always so blatant.

What I do know is that my dreams of my great-grandmother slowed down towards the end of my pregnancy, and in those dreams it felt like her and I shared a secret. She would wink at me and observe my behaviour, but never had much to say.

Those dreams of my great-grandmother, while unprovable still reinforced my belief in reincarnation. As I clean up after my daughter I find myself wondering if my younger self had known that I would fulfill my promise, just not in that lifetime.

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