Not dead, right?

Last night, I had a terrible dream. I dreamed that Cara Beth was dead.
Isn't that just absolutely horrifically incredibly humongously
monstrously extremely terribly terrible, sad, disastrous, depressing and
horrid? I mean, what would we do without her? Anyway, I was actually kind
of mad along with my distress when I learned of her death, because she
had been gone for over a week and nobody had told me! And I'd been
wondering why she didn't answer my e-mail. . . . which is quite true,
because she really hasn't answered my last e-mail.

I was fairly convinced that this was a dream, but when I "woke up" and
asked my mom about it, she confirmed that my dear cousin really had died.
What's more, is that I went over to her house and Cara was there! I mean
that she was dead, but she had been permitted to come home for her
funeral, and she was picking out the pictures of herself that she liked
the best so we could make a slide show in memory of her (man, that girl's
got nerve). Her family didn't even seem too despondent about her supposed
"death," and who can blame them, since even I felt comforted about it
since she was there in what appeared to be all flesh and blood? Aunt Ali
was quite sympathetic though when I told her that the news had hit me
rather hard. Cara talked almost freely about her being dead (or so I
vaguely remember), and didn't even seem bothered that she passed away
right before her sixteenth birthday (which should have hinted to me that
this dream wasn't real, since she turned sixteen nearly three months
ago). Anyway, to make a long story short, I did eventually wake up. But
not wholly convinced, I asked my mother if Cara was alive. She said that
she was, which comforted me a little, although I'm thinking that maybe I
shouldn't believe her until I've heard Cara's voice itself. But how am I
to know that once I do it's not just her back in her dead form?

*Sigh* The point of this post is that I'm immensely glad that one of my
very best friends isn't dead. Don't you share my relief?