Dreaming of the departed

[scarlettina]

This morning as I was reading my flist, I found myself reading a back-entry of kate_schaefer's about a friend of hers who died years ago, and of whom she'd recently dreamed. It shook loose a realization that I'd dreamed about dochyel a couple of nights back. I'd dreamed that I was sitting or standing across from a friend (one of those generic, unidentified friends who show up in dreams) who was sitting on a flight of stairs, and that dochyel was curled up on a coffee table, I think, between us. He'd been there for years, apparently. We knew he was dead, but there he lay, perfect, as if he were only sleeping--and then he began to rouse and awaken. And then I woke up.

I've dreamed about him a few times since he died, and we're always passing each other somewhere. The last time I dreamed about him, we were in a farmer's market taking place in Grand Central Station. He was wearing his hair long and, rather than the Van Dyke he'd worn for years, he wore a handlebar mustache (which was a pretty good look for him, I have to admit). Anyway, I was delighted to see him and he was happy to see me, but when I asked him to come with me to see my apartment ("Come see the house," I said. "You never got to visit."), he told me he had to go; he was on his way elsewhere and he was clearly pressed for time--if a little regretful about it--as if he was going to miss some cosmic train departure for some other dimension if he didn't hurry.

That dream always left me with two reactions. The first was that feeling that the people I care most about often don't have time for me, which is more about my own abandonment issues than it is related to the truth of my experience; my friends are generous and loving with their time and I know it. The second was a feeling of gratitude that I got to see him at all. One of my great sadnesses about his death is that the night before he died we'd been in email planning to get together when I next visited New York, which was only to be in a week or so.

I haven't dreamed about markbourne at all since he passed away. Or maybe I did once; I have a vague memory of seeing his smiling face in a dream, but that's all. For a while, I found it distressing that he didn't appear in my dreams, as if it was a choice he was making rather than a choice my subconscious was making. The woo-woo, spiritual side of me still feels that way a bit mainly, I think, because given the discussions that dochyel and I had years ago about the nature of the soul and its connections on different levels of consciousness, I always feel like my dreams about dochyel really are visits from him rather than my manifesting his image myself--even if he is too busy to linger for a proper catch-up. If encounters in dreams really are visits from the other side, then I'm happy to have them, and I'll assume that the lack of visits from markbourne simply means that he's OK with where we were when he left--which is to say good friends who knew each other pretty well and were happy and comfortable there. Doesn't mean I wouldn't still like to sit down and have a whiskey with him, or with dochyel for that matter.

I think one of my goals for this weekend is to do that with everyone who is solidly here with me on this plane of existence. That would be . . . a lot of whiskey. Maybe for once I should let someone else do the driving.

Comments

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

*hug*

I know that's not very articulate but it's all I can come up with now.

I dream of my parents sometimes. I wish they were better dreams but usually I'm having some sort of argument with them. Or it's some very ordinary task like shopping, except in the dream I'm always aware that they're dead, although sometimes I'm confused about it and wake up and have to consciously work that through my head. Sometimes in the dream I'm aware that they're dead and I should enjoy the time with them, even though it's something trivial.

I might have told you this story, but when I was 24 or so, my mother's best friend, my "Aunt" Rhoda, died. And about once a year I'd have this dream where I was at her holiday table, eating and drinking with the whole family, and Aunt Rhoda would ask for updates on my family and I'd fill her in. One year I said to her, "Um...so, Aunt Rhoda...you're dead, right?" She said, "Are we having a nice visit?" "Yes." "Are you enjoying the food?" "Yes." "So just shut up and eat already."

When I told my mother, the least wu-wu person in the universe, about that dream many years later, she was quiet for a very long time and then she said, "Next time you see her, give her my love."

When did I stop having that dream? When my mother died. I really hope to go back to Aunt Rhoda's holiday table sometime and find my parents with her.

And does this make me believe in life after death? No. I can still maintain intellectually that this is a product of something going on in my own little head. But I also concede that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

There are for more things, indeed. Thank you for that response. I appreciate it.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that when I originally read your response, I did have a moment of real sympathy. You mentioned dreaming about your parents and arguing. For years, whenever I'd dream about my mother, she was screaming at me--and I mean screaming: full-throated, banshee-worthy screaming in anger. It was hideous, and I'd always wake up feeling beaten up, guilty, and sad. Over the last few years, that's changed, and the dreams have gotten better. I have all sorts of thoughts about why this has changed, which I won't air here. Suffice it to say that I'm glad it has changed and consider it a personal victory.

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

Yes. I used to have screaming fights with my mother in dreams. I seldom do anymore, just more like situations in which we just completely fail to understand each other. I too have thoughts about why this has changed that I don't want to get into on LJ, but...yes.

[singingnettle.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I think my mother doesn't have specific dream visits with me where *she* knows she dead, as Aunt Rhoda does, because she refuses to believe in life after death. I think my mother could go to Heaven, for lack of a better word, and sit there with her arms crossed insisting, "This is just a figment of my imagination."Or possibly she thinks I'm a figment of her imagination.

[prettyshrub.livejournal.com]

*HUGS*

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

I appreciate the hugs, I do. It's not that kind of post, though. I'm just sort of . . . ruminating on all this stuff. It's neither good nor bad; it just is.

[prettyshrub.livejournal.com]

I know it isn't that kind of post. I just wanted you to know I appreciate you as a friend.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Thank you, girl. :-) I appreciate you too!

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

And this is very, very helpful to me, in ways I cannot clearly articulate but appreciate so much more than I can say while I'm churning through my own set of emotions and memories. Of course thinking of one of my dear dead brings up memories of all the others as well, and I have lived long enough that there are many lost. Nell's the hardest loss, but the others hurt, too.

Thank you.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

You're very welcome, Kate.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you're getting time with some of them, which ever way it turns out in the end.

It is intereting to see how so many people have dreamed about thier lost ones. I'm usually a long intricate lucid dreamer, but that has changed in the last 15 years or so and while I've dreamed of people's deaths and grieved them long before they died, as early as my teens, I've never had dreams about any of my dead ones until recently my Dad has popped up a couple of times. I usually know he's dead, and can't really figure out why he's there. We don't usually directly interact. There was one where this lake was supposed to make him alive, but that one was all over the map.