The power of a dream

“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each other’s dreams, we can be together all the time.” 
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

It takes a very long time to get used to the reality that someone you love deeply will no longer exist in your every day life as a living, breathing, hugging person.  Somehow the mind and the heart find ways of learning to cope with it over time.  Truth be told, it sometimes requires the help of prescription medicine, or more holistic methods through meditation and visual imagery.  Whatever it takes, I've always believed if you're functioning in life, if you're able to be there for your children, and you allow yourself the time to grieve, you're managing the difficult journey of grief.  To help deal with their loss, I've encouraged people to look for the signs that others might think are just coincidences, but for those who are missing someone, signs are precious little nuggets of love from heaven.

One of the many challenges in grief is accepting the fact that the only way to "be" with the person who passed is in dreams.  In the beginning, it's hard to think of anything else.  You try to will yourself to dream.  They say that if you're going to dream that night, (or remember the dream, because supposedly, we dream every night) you're more likely to dream about the last thoughts you have before drifting off to sleep.  I often say a little prayer to Jeff, begging him to show up in my dream.  More often than not, it doesn't happen.

But when we dream, it can be euphoric and amazingly real. In the first year after Jeff died, I dreamed of him one night and woke up immediately after. His scent that had long faded from my world was so strong it was as if he was lying in bed next to me.  It was like receiving a warm hug.  As time passes, the dreams come even less frequently it seems, while the wanting for them increases a bit.

This past week it had been about a year since I last dreamed of Jeff.  I saw three cardinals at the bird feeder in the midst of the recent blizzard, and thought about my friends who believe a cardinal is a sign of their loved ones saying hello.  For me it's rainbows and dragonflies.  The day I was going to New York to pick up a piece of steel from the World Trade Center a few years, a dragonfly was in my kitchen.  I couldn't catch it to set it free, so I left it.  In New York about a block from Ground Zero, I opened the moon roof in my car and a dragonfly flew in and landed on my knee.  A dragonfly in the middle of New York City ... I smiled and said "well hello Jeff!" before it flew out the same way it came in.  When I got home later that night, the dragonfly was there, wings spread on my wall.  I opened the door and it flew away.

Even though cardinals aren't my sign from heaven, the night I saw the cardinals at the feeder I dreamed about Jeff.  Randomly, he was there in our house, standing in front of me.  He knew he had been away for a while, but we didn't discuss why.  He was happy, looking like I remember him -- full of life; his memorable smile filled me with joy.  The details are vague, but I woke up convinced that his death had been a bad dream.  I felt the emptiness as I swept my arm across his side of the bed, and the reality of my life hit me again.  But instead of being overcome with sadness, (I think subconsciously, there's a little part of me that will never recover from Jeff's death and I've grown accustomed to that) I was grateful for the "visit" and re-energized that he is still out there ... somewhere ... watching over us.

Thank goodness life has an uncanny way of allowing us to move forward, live with the memories and find happiness along the way.  Although we can't dream on demand and we don't always dream when we need it the most, when one does happen, it's a gift that can help get you over grief hurdles ... until the next dream.