What dreams do come.

I had a dream last night, the first one that I've remembered clearly on waking in a very long time. I was in a house, with quite a few members of my extended family. I had the feeling that it was my parents' house, but it wasn't one that they've ever owned while I was alive. There was a fire place, with a fire burning in it - one of those that has glass on two sides so you can see through into a different room. Everyone was sort of dressed in dark clothes and it was rather dark in the house, but for the fire place. They were all getting ready to leave the house, to go to a funeral, my grandmother's funeral. Except my grandmother and my grandfather were both there, getting ready to go with everyone else. I was walking up the stairs into the main part of the house, getting ready to go along with everyone else, but then I was told that someone had to stay behind and watch the fire in the fireplace, because it was important that it stay lit. And it fell to me, since apparently "I wasn't all that involved in keeping up with the family anyways". So I stayed there and watched the fire burn and everyone else left.

So that was the dream. I'm generally not much into dream analysis or anything, but damn, there's a lot in that one that hits kind of close to home in some discomforting ways.