I’ll See You in My Dreams

I’ll See You in My Dreams

by

I don’t remember most of my dreams.

From when I was a little kid, the vast majority of my dreams that I remember at all are anxiety-filled or nightmares. Even when they’re not bad, more often than not, they do not contain anyone recognizable from my waking hours.

After my 4-year-old daughter drowned, I sat in grief support groups and was completely envious hearing various people tell of their frequent dreams featuring their departed loved ones. One woman told a group that she got to review the day’s events in long conversations with her dead son every night. Others told of being able to see or hear their loved one every time they had a hard day.

I listened in silence feeling jealous, angery, sad, and frustrated knowing I hadn’t dreamt of my daughter at all in the months since she died.

How I wished the dreams would come. For months after her death, I remember pleading with her every night to visit me in my dreams. But I would awake the next morning feeling disappointed. And yet the dream stories at the support groups kept coming.

Finally, the first dream featuring my daughter, Margareta, came many months after she died. It was during one of my regular long, convoluted dreams that made no sense. I was in a gymnasium filled with parents who watched as their young children filed into the room in a line, as if they were in a parade.

I was elated and shocked all at once as I laid eyes on my daughter, whose hair was noticeably shorter than when she was alive. In the dream, I knew she was dead and thought, “Is this real?” I even asked a father standing next to me, “Can you see her?” thinking I might be the only one who could. Margareta didn’t speak. She just looked at me and smiled and then walked out of view.

The dream ended abruptly, but I was filled with gratitude for the brief glimpse of my daughter.

Another dream some months after that first one was the most memorable and wonderful dream I’ve ever had. I don’t remember anything else about the dream except that it ended with me walking into a backyard where my husband and other family members were gathered for a barbeque.

My husband explained to me that somehow Margareta was able to be with us and I turned and saw her and quickly picked her up and hugged her tight. Then I held her so I could look at her lovely face. She gently cupped my cheeks with her small hands. Then looking into my eyes, she smiled and said, “Mommy loves me.”

I woke up in tears. I knew how much my daughter loved me, but hearing her say those words was so meaningful. They let me know she knew and had felt how much I loved her. It was what my soul desperately needed to hear. Especially since I was still so filled with guilt over her death.

In the years since her death, I have had very few dreams featuring my daughter.

I can probably count them on one hand. One was an unwelcome nightmare, where she lay on the concrete near a pool sucking her thumb. She began to stiffen from rigamortis as I looked on in horror and desperation. The other dreams have been wonderful, short glimpses and reminders of my beautiful daughter. She doesn’t speak and they don’t last long. But I am so thankful for them, because I know she is dead in the dream and how much of a gift it is to see her.

This last month was a hard one for me. The beginning of the month marked another birthday we had to celebrate without her. The end of the month marked the anniversary of that horrible day when she drowned in our pool while we were home. Day after day, I struggled with intense emotions and felt overwhelmed from everyday life.

On one particularly bad day, I wrote about how I was feeling. Then after work, I drove to the cemetery (which I don’t do much anymore). I sat at her grave and cried as I talked to her. I told her everything that was on my mind, but mostly how much I missed her; how much I wanted to just hold her and hear her sweet voice again. It helped release some of the tension I’d been holding inside, as most trips to the cemetery do.

Later that week, I was surprised by another rare dream featuring Margareta.

I don’t remember how it started, but my husband and I were driving on a road that started to get very rough. The road led us into a cave where the exit was covered with rocks and boulders. We got out and started removing the rocks. And as I pulled them away, I began to see Margareta’s face on the other side. I was ecstatic! She smiled and then began talking — which she has only done once before in my dreams. I don’t remember anything she said, but I got to hug her, talk to her, and spend time with her. It was as if she were responding to my conversation with her at the cemetery a few days before!

What about you? Do you have memorable dreams of someone you lost?

For those who can seemingly dream about your dead loved ones whenever you want, I continue to be envious. For those who rarely if ever have dreams featuring your loved one, I sympathize with you. While I don’t expect to have another dream about Margareta for a long, long time, I will continue to wait with hopefulness.

I love you, Margareta, and I’ll see you in my dreams…

The Worst Has Already Happened

The Worst Has Already Happened

by

Growing up, I wanted to think I was a “glass half full” kind of person. But the truth is, I was always anticipating and worried about the next bad thing I was sure would happen to me. I lived amid the constant feeling that life around me was unpredictable, chaotic, and often unfair. That is a bitter pill for a little kid to swallow.

My solution to get rid of the ever present anxiety was to continually try to change myself and my behavior.

It was a desperate attempt to control the people and situations around me. I’m sure you can guess that this never seemed to work. It might have an effect for a short while, but then something would “go wrong” again.

Ironically – and unbeknownst to me at the time – it caused even more anxiety. I was constantly trying to mentally catalog the apparent cause and effect my behavior and actions had. If I did A, then B happened. Except that sometimes when I did A, then D, G, or even L happened. It was too confusing and hard to keep track of. But being prone to perfectionism, I kept trying.

Looking back, I have to wonder what my ultimate fear was.

I know for sure I didn’t like the feelings of sadness, loneliness, shame. And certainly didn’t like feeling like I was at the mercy of this unfair universe. But what was it that I was scared would happen if I didn’t keep trying to keep it all under my control? To this day, I’m still not sure.

Those feelings of anxiety and desperate attempts to control the people and situations in my life followed me into adulthood. It just became a way of life for me. And it became more complex as the years went on. There were more people and more situations I had to juggle to try to control. And bigger risks at stake.

Instead of just making sure I was getting good grades in school to get into college, I now had to make sure I kept my employers happy so that I could keep a roof over my head and food on my table. After having a family of my own, I felt the responsibility of not only trying to keep my own life under control and happy, but theirs too. The anxiety intensified, and it became overwhelming.

Overwhelming or not, it was my life, and I did the best I could at trying to balance all of it.

Amid the anxiety and complexity of my life, I was able to find some happiness. My children were beacons of light and love that I held tight to. After ending a disappointing marriage, I found love again and added a stepson and then a daughter to my beloved family.

We were a tight-knit family that focused all our free time on finding new adventures and memories to share. The anxiety and challenges never went away, but it was better balanced by the rewards my family brought.

That all ended on September 30, 2009. On that day my 4-year-old daughter, Margareta, drowned in our pool while we were at home.

On that day, I learned my ultimate lesson: no matter how tightly we try to control our lives and everything in it, we are not in charge of what happens to us.

That stark reality is scary and horrible and can be incredibly unfair, but we cannot change it.

At first, the grief of losing my daughter was like experiencing all those feelings of anxiety, sadness, loneliness, unfairness, and chaos over the course of my lifetime times infinity. True to my lifetime of experience, I tried desperately to overcome the intense feelings of grief by controlling my actions and behaviors. It didn’t work; it seemed to have the opposite effect of just intensifying them instead.

This beast that was grief was unlike anything I’d ever encountered. The harder I fought to suppress it, the worse it seemed to get.

The pain remained unbearable, so I waged this battle against grief for several years. Just as I had done before, I mentally cataloged all of the grief triggers I experienced in hopes to avoid them the next time. I adjusted my response and behavior to each trigger to try to find which ones made the pain lessen. To my frustration, none of them did and the triggers remained unpredictable and intense.

At some point, I realized that my lifelong urge to try to control my life was actually making things worse. And made the choice to stop fighting grief. In doing so, I finally began to understand what I had always been looking for. The irony that I learned this lesson in the face of my worst nightmare come true was not lost on me. It became the silver lining around the dark cloud that I was immersed in.

The reality is that the worst has already happened. My daughter is dead and there is nothing that I can do to change that.

Knowing that I survived the worst pain I will ever face has significantly reduced my anxiety and changed my perspective forever. Challenges that used to seem insurmountable or cause for alarm now appear manageable in comparison. I now know I have the inner strength to handle whatever comes my way. I now have the humility to know that I cannot control the emotions or reactions of anyone else. Showing my vulnerability and asking for help is not a sign of weakness, but one of courage and strength.

I choose to no longer look at life with a “glass half full” versus “glass half empty” mentality. The glass is what it is.

We will have good days and bad days. Our experience will include joy as well as sorrow. We will be filled with love and with pain. And we will continually be faced with challenges and uncomfortable feelings.

This is the ultimate lesson I have learned: I am not in control of my life. I never was. The only control I have is the choice to allow life to happen to me without fighting it. To accept each situation – no matter how difficult or painful. And instead, focus my attention and energy on answering the question, “What do I do next?”

The Club Nobody Wants to Belong To

The Club Nobody Wants to Belong To

by

I am a member of a club I don’t want to belong to.

I didn’t voluntarily sign up for it, yet I’m forced to be in it for the rest of my life. The cost of admission to this club was at an impossible price, but it was taken from me anyway. The price was my child’s life. My membership card is my child’s death certificate.

I am the parent of a dead child.

I have found that this club tends to keep to itself because its very existence makes most non-members too uncomfortable. Members of this club are the unwelcome reminders that a family’s worst fear can come true. The death of a child has often been described as “unnatural.” And yet it happens every day, all over the world. Still, these parents and their families often grieve in silence long after the funeral ends.

There is no “getting over it.” People grieve as long as they are a member of this club. Until their own last breath.

It doesn’t matter the age of your child when they died; membership in this club changes you forever.

It changes your understanding of life itself. Your demeanor changes, as do your reactions to everything around you. And these changes can have some nasty side-effects.

The death of a child can cause long-standing marriages or relationships with family or friends to abruptly come to an end for a variety of reasons. It can challenge your faith and rock your belief system to its core. You can develop health issues or go into deep depression. It isolates you from the world.

Membership in this club also brings a torrent of everyday challenges that non-members just don’t understand.

Once simple questions like, “How are you?” or, “How many children do you have?”, become sources of great pain and internal debate. Should you answer honestly and risk exacerbating your pain and feelings of isolation due to the expected horrified look or obvious discomfort of the person asking when they hear your answer? Or do you lie and give the expected answer based on whether you think you’ll ever see the person again, but then feel further isolated or even guilty for seemingly betraying your dead child? This is just one of many examples of dilemmas you never thought you’d have to face.

Even though the pain will last forever, over time, being a member of this club can offer some unexpected benefits.

The death of a child can give you a greater appreciation of how precious this life of ours is. You no longer take certain things for granted. It can teach you a deeper sense of compassion, empathy, and gratitude. In some cases, it can even improve your relationships with yourself and others. It can even lead you towards a life with a greater sense of purpose and meaning.

I have experienced all of these benefits, and am truly grateful for these gifts. But given the choice, I’d give up my membership in a heartbeat.

I’ll always hate being the parent of a dead child.

Today is a Bad Day

Today is a Bad Day

by

Today is a bad day.

It is a day where I feel defeated by grief; defeated by life.

It is a day where I feel like crying. And I wish that I would let it all out—but the tears won’t come. I feel the pressure behind my eyes, but not enough to break the dam. I’m left with immense feelings of heaviness and sadness.

Today is a day where I’d rather be back in bed than have to deal with everything and everyone around me. But I don’t have the luxury of sticking my head in the sand and checking out. So I do my best to stay quiet and keep to myself for fear of snapping at the next innocent person who does something ordinary that I just don’t have the patience for.

Today is a day where everything—every little task or idea—seems overwhelming. Not because it’s too difficult, but because I just don’t care. I don’t care enough about anything today to find the energy to give to it.

Why don’t I care? Because my daughter is dead—and today everything else seems completely unimportant and irrelevant in the cold darkness of that reality.

Today is a day in the middle of a difficult month that is book-ended by painful reminders of her death. Her birthday was on the first day of this month—another year passed where she didn’t grow older. The anniversary of her death is on the last day of this month. Part of me thinks this month can’t end soon enough—yet come next month, my daughter will still be dead.

Today is a day where all the beauty around me cannot seem to penetrate the fog of despair. The loving smiles and embraces of my other children; the quiet serenity of nature around me; and even the daily reminders of my daughter and her continued presence and importance in my life. None of them can overcome these painful feelings today.

Today is a day where I accept being trapped within a wave of grief that has brought me to my knees.

I will handle it the best I can. I will be kind to myself. And I will be patient with my emotions. I will try not to push myself to do more than I can handle, and lean on others for support. I will look for the love within the pain and light within the darkness.

Today is a bad day.

I hope tomorrow will be better.

The Keepers of Your Flame

The Keepers of Your Flame

by

When you died, the whole world did not mourn you.

You were not a celebrity, a world leader, and didn’t make the nightly news. You didn’t invent things that changed the world and will not end up in history books. But you made an indelible mark in our lives and in our hearts.

You meant the world to us.

You are our spouses, mothers and fathers; our grandparents, sisters and brothers. Our favorite aunts and uncles and cherished cousins and friends. You are our children; who may have only lived a few precious years or never even lived to take your first breath.

Long after the funeral is over – long after the rest of our world appears to have forgotten you – you stay fresh in our minds. We think of you in the quiet moments. When your favorite song comes on. Or when we see something we think you’d have liked…or hated. We think of how you’re missing from the special occasions in our lives. In our times of sorrow, we wish you were here to give us the hug and reassurance we desperately need from you.

We think of you.

Your legacy is not that of the job you held or the number of houses or cars you owned. It doesn’t matter how much money you made or how much influence you had in your community. Your legacy is that of tender moments and loving embraces. It is how wonderful and important you made us feel while you were with us. It is the smiles you put on our faces and the laughter we shared. Even if we never got the chance to hold you.

You mattered to us.

Your body died, but you live on in our memories. You live in the sparkle of our eyes every time we speak your name or hold you in our hearts. There will never be a time when we don’t remember you.

We miss you and love you.

We are the keepers of your flame.