Afterlife?

It is comforting to believe that death isn't the end of things, but rather the beginning of something else, and I guess we need all the comfort we can get.
If there is some other realm of being, it wouldn't be surprising that we mainly have contact with it when we're asleep, because in our dreams all the rational defenses of realism are wiped away.

Here are four dreams connected with Asher:
The first was dreamed by an acquaintance of ours, a woman who could be a good friend of ours, but so far we haven't had the opportunity to develop our friendship. She described it to us in an email, which I've edited slightly:

I dreamed this on a Saturday morning last December. I hadn't known that Asher was missing. Actually I didn't know you had a son named Asher, Of your children I was only acquainted with Asher's older brother.

The dream was that a boy named Asher was swinging in a hammock with his Mother, and then I said to her, "you need a break" and urged him to come and play, promising him that there would be toys for boys . He started towards me, but he had to climb a very steep slope, which was rocky and slippery, and then, at the top, climb over a fence As I went to reach for him, he slipped and fell, hitting his head so hard that it made a loud THUNK, a really loud sound that I heard in the dream.
I was very alarmed, because I could tell by the sound that it was a dangerously serious blow to the head, but could see there was no blood or wound on his head. He acknowledged that it was a severe blow but said, "I am not in pain. I feel no pain."

I woke and thought about the dream, especially noting the sensual aspect (I heard the sound). Later I went to have Shabbat lunch with the Danny and Beatrix B., with whom my husband and I used to be friendly when we lived in Jerusalem, and with whom I had not visited in years.

The conversation meandered over many topics, and we talked about the book I have just finished for Sefirat ha-Omer, and I wondered whether the pages might be good for an exhibit at their synagogue.
I mentioned that I would call Judith and speak to her, and at that point Danny and Beatrix asked me if I knew what was happening with your family. They said that your son Asher was missing. I was alarmed to hear the news and bewildered at the synchronicity of having just dreamed about a boy named Asher, although the boy in my dream wasn't an adult, the fact that I even dreamed about someone with that name and then the slippery slope part It was all very strange. I told them about the dream then and they were surprised too. After Shabbat, I called Danny and asked him if he thought I should tell you about the dream then. He suggested not, and I decided to just wait and see. After a while, almost two weeks later, I heard that Asher had been found ... and the nature of his accident.

I was especially surprised when, after I told you the dream the other day, you showed me the picture album with all the pictures of Asher and the hammock.

I believe very firmly, have experienced it actually, that we can have visitations from our departed loved ones. Its not like dreaming about someone. It is as if they are right there.

The second dream is Judith's. She dreamed it even before she shared her worry about Asher with us, before we started looking for him. In her dream, we were at some kind of gathering, and Asher showed up in the form of a marble portrait bust. Judith greeted him, but then she told him that he had to go upstairs, to a kind of roof gallery. That's where you belong, she told him, and he went up.

The third and forth dreams are mine.
In one dream, while we were looking for Asher, I saw him very clearly, walking down a sunlit slope. He saw me, waved to me, smiled broadly, and said he was all right.
I just dreamed my second one recently. I dozed off while I was having a massage and dreamed that the masseur (a good friend of ours, not a stranger) and someone else led me to an opening in a stone wall in some kind of castle and threw me over it. I landed, unhurt, in a bed of flowers, and the masseur walked down some stone stairs to greet me. The whole scene was lit with bright sunlight, and there were flowers. I paid him then for the massage.
When I roused from that dream, I connected it closely to Asher. In fact, I don't ordinarily dream about Asher - at least I don't remember dreaming about him.
The first dream, dreamed by a woman who knows us, but not well, and whose name is also Judith, but who never knew Asher, is absolutely uncanny. I can only "explain" it by thinking that Asher's spirit was looking for someone receptive, and at that point his mother wasn't receptive. Judith's dream about Asher's visit, is almost as uncanny, because of its setting. At the shiva she told it to a young family friend, who recalled that Asher once worked with him when he was building a roof gallery in an apartment, a place very much like the one that Judith saw in her dream. She had completely forgotten that Asher ever had that job.
My dreams are less uncanny, more easily explicable by wishful thinking, but Asher's presence in the first one was extremely vivid.