The Lira on the Nightstand

My grandmother, whom I called Mémère, was a woman who walked between worlds. She saw the flicker of the departed in the corner of her eye, heard their whispers in the rustle of curtains, and felt their presence like a cool draft on a warm day. Her own mother and sister shared this gift, a thread of the supernatural woven through their bloodline. This is a story she told me, one that still clings to my heart like a cold mist.

Mémère married Pépère, a man who had crossed the Atlantic from his home in Portugal at the age of twenty. Most of his siblings—nine of ten—had made the journey to our small town in Quebec, but his parents and his aunts and uncles remained in the old country. They gathered only for weddings, and the ocean was a formidable barrier between the two branches of the family.

One night, Mémère had a dream that felt more real than waking. A young boy, no more than five, appeared at the foot of her bed. He wore a worn linen shirt and trousers, and his dark hair was tousled. He clutched a handful of crumpled escudos—the old Portuguese currency before the euro—and placed them on her nightstand. His eyes, deep and solemn, met hers. ‘My avó gave me this money to buy ice cream in heaven, like we used to do together. Please give it back to her.’ Then he vanished, leaving Mémère in the stillness of the dark.

She woke with a start, the imprint of the boy’s face etched in her mind. To her astonishment, there on the nightstand lay a few escudo notes, worn and faded. She gasped, her hand trembling as she touched them. They were real. She woke Pépère, who frowned and muttered about a trick of the light, but the notes remained solid in her palm.

The dream haunted her for days. She knew it was a message, but from whom? Pépère was skeptical, yet he agreed to call his family in Portugal. His sister, Tia Rosa, answered. When Mémère described the boy, Rosa let out a choked sob. ‘That is our nephew, little Mateus,’ she said. ‘He died last month, just before his sixth birthday. He loved ice cream with his avó, my mother. She used to give him a few escudos to buy it. She’s been grieving terribly.’

Mémère’s heart ached. She understood now: the boy had come to her because she was a bridge. She arranged to send the escudos back to Portugal, to Mateus’s grandmother, wrapped in a letter explaining the dream. But the story didn’t end there.

Weeks later, Mémère had another dream. This time, she stood in a sunlit square, cobblestones warm beneath her feet. A fountain bubbled in the center, and there was Mateus, laughing. He ran to her and hugged her tightly. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Now my avó can smile again, and I can have my ice cream.’ He pointed to a bench where an elderly woman sat, a confused but peaceful expression on her face as she clutched the escudos in her hand. In the dream, Mémère watched as the woman looked up, and for a moment, their eyes met. The woman smiled, and Mémère knew she had felt the connection.

When Mémère woke, she felt a profound sense of peace. She told me that the veil between worlds was thin, but love could travel across it. The escudos had been returned, and with them, a measure of healing. She kept one escudo note—the one that had been the last to disappear from the nightstand—as a reminder that even death cannot sever the bonds of family, nor the simple joy of shared ice cream.