The sight of her was startling. “Shelagh, you can’t be here. You’re dead, remember?” She laughed, put her arm around me and assured me that all was well. “Oh, Mom, you’ll be okay. And I’m fine now.”
At that point the dream ended. The Baron had come in the front door, returning from church, and the rattle of the doorknob wakened me. The dream itself was so vivid that I was disoriented for a few minutes after I came back to the surface.
Since then, things have been the same, but different. I don’t grieve any more. Instead, I remember all the things I loved about my daughter and how fortunate I was to have been her mother – as rocky as that road was sometimes.
The whole post is lovely. Remembrance Day for Shelagh at The Neighborhood of God.
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9 comments:
I think that is entirely believable. While I have not had anything like exactly the same experience, I too have received messages of comfort from one I loved and lost to death. It definitely changes how we look at the death of the one gone on before.
Dear Dr. D,
I would love to receive an email with your descriptions of the dreams, if you would like to share them with me.
Cool. Thanks
They are pretty personal and not something I really want to put on the Internet, thank you.
For me, messages in dreams are not coming from anything outside myself. There is nothing other-worldly or supernatural about it. These dreams are not about the literal person who is dead. Instead, they are about me. For instance, last night I dreamt that I was in my dead grandmother's old house. In the dream, she has died and my mother and sister and I are staying in the house- in the way we would have done when she was alive. I notice that there is all this wood furniture. And I think that grandma wanted me to have it. I declare to my mom and sister that the dresser and wooden hutches are items that I will be inheriting. I also say that I'm willing to give my sister one of the hutches, but really they belong to me. I know this deep down because grandma would have wanted me to have them. (In real, waking life, there were no real wooden pieces of furniture to inherit).
Hi now,
That is an interesting dream. It is not a visitation dream because it does not have your actual grandmother appearing in the dream. Often, in visitation dreams, the deceased speaks and gives a message of reassurance to the dreamer. Also, the dreamer will say that the dream seemed different than ordinary dreams, stronger, more real.
This is not to disrespect your dream about your grandmother's house and the wood furniture. With regard to that dream, I am wondering if one layer of the dream may be making a pun on wood and would. That occurred to me because you say that "I know this deep down because grandma would have wanted me to have them." I am wondering what your grandmother would have wanted you to have/ be/ experience that might be represented by a "dresser" and a "hutch".
From what I see in Tony Crisp's Dream Dictionary, the items of wood furniture may represent the structures of thought or behavior that have been built up, that once had life, but have now become habitual, lacking life or feeling.
Thanks, Perpetua.
My grandmother would want me to be married. A hutch represents a place for family keepsakes, such as a wedding dress or embroidered clothes. It is an inherited item, represents quality: family, history, things of worth and value.
It also occurs to me that there is a science lab (cancer research center) here in Seattle referred to as "the hutch".
Hi Perpetua,
Hmmm. Well, I think I had a visitation dream last night. But the visitor is someone who is still alive:
Thich Nhat Hanh.
I'm with my cousin (Erika, whom I haven't seen in maybe 10 years in waking life). In the dream, she has a sick baby. We are walking along outside. It is near dusk. I notice that up ahead of us is Thich Nhat Hanh (Thay). I tell my cousin that we have to take her baby to him. At first she's not enthusiastic because she doesn't believe me and just doesn't know who he is. I take her baby to Thay. He blesses her and I am assured that he has conferred some kind of healing - not just to the baby, but to me, Erika, and our family.
But, am not sure it counts as visitation dream...
It felt like he was in my dream and that I sought him out like the woman in the gospels who was bleeding and sought healing from Jesus.
I've also had a dream that the Dali Lama has been in. But, it did not feel like a visitation dream. There was no message from him or anything. He was just getting ready to eat chicken at a buffet!
So, I guess am trying to decide if Thay appearing in my dream is a visitation dream or not. Mabye quasi-so.
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