Man has always been fascinated by dreams. Carl Jung believed they were a way of communicating with your unconscious. For the Australian Aborigine's Dreamtime is an integral part of their beliefs. There are at least four aspects to Dreamtime – The beginning of all things; the life and influence of the ancestors; the way of life and death; and sources of power in life. Check out any bookstore and you will find dozens of books claiming to explain the symbolism of dreams. One thing that I know is, that after being a caretaker for my Mom, death is not a barrier. I still see her in my dreams.
Several months before she died my Mom had to have surgery to remove some cancerous growths on her face. It was a very painful procedure but she endured it stoically the way she did everything else in her life. Her doctor wrote us a letter of condolence after Mom died remembering how brave Mom was during that painful procedure. I helped her take care of the wounds and kept her spirits up as she worried that the skin graft wouldn’t take.
A few months after Mom died I dreamt of her. She had come into the bedroom to talk to me. She had a huge bandage on her face from the surgery. It was larger than it had been in real life. She had also lost more weight. She was only 94 pounds when she died. In the dream Mom collapsed on the floor by my bed. I held her and kept crying that it wasn’t fair. I kept saying that “you promised she would be well and whole after she died.” I woke myself up crying. It was one of the most awful nightmares I have ever had.
Fortunately the dreams that followed were different. In one dream the family was trying to catch Mom. She was driving around trying to keep away from us. We were trying to catch her so that she could go back to where she was supposed to be. We were trying to convince her that she was dead and was supposed to be over in Heaven with the other dead people but Mom didn’t want to be there. She wanted to be here.
I have had dreams where Mom comes back and we are able to do things we couldn’t in real life. I wanted to take Mom shopping again. We had gone out several months previous to a large shopping center that was out of town. Our little town had nothing in the way of shopping unless you were enamored by Wal-Mart. I had some gift cards that I wanted to use. That first trip had been a wonderful day. It was a girl’s day out. I had planned on taking her out again for her birthday and giving her some of my gift cards to get some books for herself. She passed away before that happened. In a dream a few months ago Mom came back to Earth and we were able to do our girl’s day out shopping trip. In the dream I woke up the next morning wondering if it had all been a dream only to find a scarf that Mom had bought on the trip to let me know that she had really been with me.
Both my brother and I have had dreams where she comes back to try and help us sell the house. She acknowledges that she is dead but that we need her help and she is here to help us. In all of my recent dreams Mom just suddenly appears and continues on as if nothing has ever happened.
Except for that one horrible nightmare all of my dreams about my Mom have been positive. I occasionally dream about my Dad. A few months after he died I dreamt of Dad. He told me that he was counting on me to take care of Mom. He told me exactly what was wrong with her heart and what I would need to do to care for her. He told me that I was the only one out of the five children that he could count on to take care of Mom properly. At the time I figured it was just a dream because my Mom was going strong and was so independent that I could never imagine that she would need me to take care of her. That was one dream that I know now was a prophecy. Six years later my Mom was on the phone asking me to move in and take care of her.
I really don’t care what psychologists and others have to say about what dreams are. I don’t care how others interpret dreams. I don’t care about dream symbolism. The important thing for me is that in my dreams I can once again experience my Mom and Dad. In dreams they are still alive and I find that very comforting.