Shortly after my sister died I had a dream. It was unlike
any dream I’d had before, or have had since. It was crystal clear and in full
colour, with none of the sepia fuzz or blurred edges of regular dreams. It was
absolutely indistinguishable from real life.
I was in a corridor at a party, surrounded by people, with
music blaring. I looked up and I saw my sister dancing toward me. Tanya had
been ill for years before she died, but in the dream she was healthy,
beautiful, and radiantly happy.
She smiled at me, and we had a brief conversation, too
intimate to be repeated here. But I said what I needed to say to her, and her
reply was just what I needed to hear.
I woke up with an absolutely overpowering sense of having
just had a conversation with my sister. Her voice rang in my ear, as real as
the sounds you can hear now. It was odd and unsettling, but incredibly
comforting to me.
Tanya has appeared in my dreams many times since, but never
again in that same way. My dreams of her are often distressing; she is there,
but I know that she shouldn’t be there because she is dead, and my dream self
is confused trying to work it all out.
I asked friends if they ever dreamed of their lost loved
ones and, overwhelmingly, they do. Some like D, whose husband died suddenly
last year, have profoundly upsetting dreams in which their loved one is lost
over and over again.
“I'm
always chasing him, begging him to come back, to stay with me and our three
sons. He never answers my questions, never looks at me in these dreams. He just
walks away and ignores my pleading. I hope to one day have a comforting dream
with him in it.”
Others
find their dreams to be uplifting, offering another glimpse of that
deeply missed person.
“I recently renovated and moved into my late parents’ home,” says M, “and they
visited me in a dream – they were so happy to be at my housewarming. I believe
they were just letting me know they approve.”
And
C, who dreamed of her late father when she was pregnant. “He came and sat next
to me in his favourite tennis shorts, put his hand on my belly and told me
we're having a girl and she will be fine. Two weeks later we found out we were
having a girl and she is now almost seven. I believe dreaming of our departed
is them coming to say hello.”
And yet many others, like me, feel bereft when they wake, as
their conscious mind remembers what their dream state did not.
“It
is comforting during the dream,” said S, who lost a parent, “but achingly sad
when I wake and have to process the loss again.”
Of course it is sad. There is always going to be sadness in death. And I wouldn’t wish my dreams of Tanya
away, not even the ones that cause me pain. It is okay for me to feel pain when
I remember my sister, or when I conjure her in my dreaming. She was in my life
for 37 years, and she will always be part of the fabric of who I am, whether or
not she is still alive.
I’ve long since stopped wondering whether my initial, hyper
realistic dream was anything more significant than just my brain grieving a
loss. I know now that it really doesn’t matter. Whether it was my sister
visiting me from beyond, or my subconscious being super kind to my conscious,
is irrelevant. It helped me more than any grief counselling or sympathy. At the
time it was just what I needed.
My sister is gone, but she lives on in my dreams. And I cherish
that. It means she is still with me, that she is not forgotten. I hope that I
dream of her for the rest of my life.
This column first appeared in Sunday Life magazine