Big Ben

I dreamt I was attending a very formal and pompous ceremony in England. My grandmother and at least one of my brothers was there. I was somehow vaguely related to the monarch via my grandmother and she looked like Tilda Swinton. However, quite abruptly, the queen died. Very chaotically and suddenly my grandmother was being ushered into a very crowded limosine with other members of the court. I was making an effort to get nearer to some man who was being ushered into the limo as well. I think I was attempt to reach him so I could be comforted by him. Though I hardly knew the woman I was incredibly upset. Everyone was. But I was barred by my brother. I said, "But my grandmother is in there!" and he replied, "And so is mine! You can't go," and the limo drove off to the funeral. I remember standing apart, alone, leaning against a column facing the street which was very yellow and sunny, but weeping uncontrollably. To my left someone asked me a question about the crowd, twice, and then I turned and snapped, "DO I LOOK LIKE I WANT TO TALK?!" I recognized the person addressing me as a girl I'd gone to middle school and high school with. She just walked off, understandably discouraged from talking to me by my outburst. The funeral was being held in a small church across the street from where I stood, but only members of the court (those driven there in limosines) were admitted to the chapel. The unselect could stand outside the chapel, or climb the towers to some very high balconies overlooking. I was standing in the hallway outside the chapel when I was approached by a handsome, very tall young man wearing slacks and a white button down shirt. He was the butler for the court (I know that doesn't make sense, but it was a dream so bear with me) and I'd met him once before in a dream. I recognized him immediately but I had to rack my brain for his name. Still, he approached me with familiarity and comfortingly put his arm around my shoulders. He showed me to a small room off the hallway, and there were some flags pinned to the wall in the farthest corner from Iran and some other Muslim nation that I didn't recognize, and I was holding some item that likewise had the flag on it. He said, "I got that when I went there, to Iran." Then he lead me out of the small room, and I had remembered his name was Ben. Someone asked me what the name of the woman was who had died and I couldn't remember but I guessed, Katie. Ben corrected me, saying Katie had been her older sister who had died before her; her name was Julie. And I remembered that I had met him before at Katie's funeral, then he put his arm around my shoulder and was stroking my hand, and said something like "Let's go, S-----," as we began to climb the stairs. All the while I am still crying and sniffling. Going up, the stairs were straight, wide, and after every other landing there were 4 doors, one to the left, one to the right, one opposite the ascending staircase, and one directly beside the ascending staircase. About halfway up we encountered a little girl in a party dress being followed by an old man. The little girl said hello and asked us what we were doing. We said we were trying to see the funeral. She said something like, "Very good, nice to see young people doing something besides sitting in their rooms wasting themselves." I was startled to hear such a remark from the little girl; it would have been more fitting coming from the old man, who never said anything but appeared friendly and merely followed the little girl through the doorway beside the stairs. Ben led me the rest of the way to the highest landing of the stairs. Once we were to the top he gave me no directions, so I pushed open the door to the left, only the enter a pristine, sparkling white tiled bathroom with wooden stalls. Ben followed me in and I sat on a sill by the sink, and Ben sat beside me. He said something to me about a funeral, for mourning, needing to be in a darker environment than I had chosen. So, putting his arm around my shoulders again he led me out of the bathroom. However, the funeral was over by now. He opened the door opposite the stairs, and I stepped down onto a very well-lit landing where a processiong of people were listening to an organist in a ceremonial gown playing a requiem (presumably), behind him a window with the sun shining in, and then the procession walked down a spiral staircase. As Ben and I began to descend the spiral staircase, I awoke. I opened my eyes, then closed them again, and an image appeared of Ben standing in a hallway, smiling at me, hands in his pockets, then a close up of his face and his brown eyes were sparkling. The dream was very vivid and the building I was in had a very strong architecture. Ben's features were very clear, and once Ben appeared there were no jumps in the sequence of action, everything followed from something else. I think Ben is one of my spirit companions, because it was not like we knew each other forever, but that we had met before and this was our reuniting. We both remembered the other. He is one who meets me to lend me comfort in a time of great sadness and mourning for the past.