Dreams

After Vivienne died, I would hear stories from other loss Moms who would talk about having dreams with their children. I was so jealous because I wanted a visit from Vivienne in my dreams so badly. I just wanted to feel close to her and feel her presence so much. I didn’t really have these dreams. Another loss Mom once said that maybe our children don’t visit us in our dreams because they know how painful it would be to wake up from it. The roles were reversed and our children were looking out for us and doing what they knew was best for us.

For a long time, I didn’t have any of those dreams that I wanted so badly. Early on, I had 1 strange dream where Gordon and I were living in some Asian country. We couldn’t speak the language, and we didn’t know how to get around. We got lost trying to get home from a bookstore. I took the dream as a metaphor for feeling like strangers in a foreign land in our regular life and for how lost we felt navigating through it. And then I remembered that in our dream we had a daughter. She was an older teenager, probably about 17. She helped us figure out our way home. I never really got a clear picture of her, but I knew she was there. At the time, I wondered if that was as close as I was going to get to Vivienne coming to me in my dreams.

Lately, I’ve had 2 dreams where I really felt like it was her. They are both very brief, but very memorable (and I don’t often remember much from my dreams). The first was a few weeks ago. I was at a doctor’s office or hospital (guess I spend so much time at those places that I now go there in my dreams) finding a seat in the waiting room. It was really crowded, and I couldn’t find a place to sit. I turned around, and a little girl ran up to me and grabbed onto my leg. She turned around and told her Mother (who wasn’t me) – “I want to sit with this lady!” I patted her on the head, and we found a couple of seats. After we sat down, I turned to look at her, and she wasn’t there. There was an adult, a stranger, sitting where she was supposed to be. Just like that, she was gone.

The second dream was more recent, and far more direct. In the dream, I walked downstairs at our house. It was nighttime, and I was in the pajamas I was actually wearing while I slept. As I stood at the bottom of the stairs, I looked into the kitchen. There was a young girl spinning around in circles with her arms stretched out to her sides (like Julie Andrews on that hilltop in the Sound of Music). She was laughing and having fun. She was clearly a spirit/ghost – kind of like you would see in the movies where you can see through her, and there is an aura around her. When she saw me, she stopped and looked at me and smiled. In the dream, we both knew that we could not go to each other. So, we stood and smiled and waved to each other. As she started to disappear, I started to blow her kisses, and she giggled. And then she was gone.

Each dream only lasts for a few seconds, but they are each seared into my brain. It is painful to wake up after seeing her. But, it also gives me some peace. I talk to my daughter in heaven all of the time. Multiple times a day, I look up to the sky to tell her how much I love her and miss her. Sometimes, I say it as a question, “you know how much I love you and miss you, don’t you?” And sometimes, she sends me a sign to let me know that she knows. I think of these dreams as those signs – she never says it, but I know her visits in my dreams are one of the ways she lets me know she loves me and is with me. I hope she keeps sending them, because I’m missing her constantly.