My dad used to smile and laugh - but the only time he looked truly happy, from within, was in a dream shortly after he died. I'd been feeling some guilt - I'm the older child and I hadn't known his heart was failing (never mind that he didn't have any symptoms beyond the general aches and pains he'd muttered about for years), so hadn't tried to drag him to a doctor. But after the dream, I just sort of knew that the universe was as it should be, and it was OK.

Our big tomcat Gashay didn't come back the way your Corgis did, but he was never much of a lap cat. However, he showed up in a dream, companionably hanging about with the tomcat I'd lost forty-some years earlier and hadn't really thought of in years until Gashay wandered in our lives as a neighborhood stray and I noticed he had the same big brown nose as my very favorite childhood cat.

Thanks for posting this, Sorcha. I always like to know how a story ends.

Hugs,
JudyB