Sugar plums and the dearly departed...

The past week and a half has been hard for me. My dreams have been filled with my mother and sister, not always in ways that are comforting. The range of positive to heart wrenching dream episodes keeps me wondering what I'm in for each night I go to bed. I know that I am not alone in having these kinds of dreams, either.

On the positive side, I have dreams where I am a kid again and my mother is making me pancakes. This is a sweet, comforting dream. Most of the dreams that I have had of my mother, since she passed away, have been like this. It is hard to wake up from these dreams because it is like finding out that she is gone all over again. One time I was dreaming and she just came into the middle of the dream, saying that "they" were letting her visit me. We both acknowledged that she had died. We held each other and she asked me if I had finished my school work. I replied, "No". She then answered, "Well, you'll do fine. I love you, honey." She then left the dream and I went back to regular scheduled programming. This was a very real thing. I cannot explain it any better than that.

The dreams that I have had about my sister have been emotional and traumatic. There is something strange about how I miss my sister now more than my mother, who, as you know, just passed. She was the one that I really need now in my life. She was my confidant and I don't have her anymore. I want to talk to her about how much I miss mom, which makes me feel just all over alone and lost. Anyway, the dreams I've had of my sister involve cycles of negative images and moments that revolved around the last parts of her life, the heavy shock of her death and the aftershocks of all those moments.

The most recent dream that I had of my sister was just two nights ago. Two men escorted me into her apartment building. I remember feeling afraid. Both of them were holding me by my forearms and took me up the stairs to the fifth floor. I was brought into her apartment, empty now, and left alone. An overwhelming sorrow came over me and the only thing I could do was shout again and again, "YOU'RE DEAD!" That was the dream. I hope there was some purpose in having it, but I don't know. The grieving process isn't cut and dry; it also isn't the same every time.

On a somewhat unrelated note:

I went in to HCI for my cancer checkup on Thursday. My checkup went well and my health was good. Even my weight was about the same, which I thought was great because I swear I gained 80 pounds in the past four months. The hard part was telling my oncologist about my mother--to inform them of family history regarding cancer. She knew my mother and was shocked to hear about it (my mother was with me for most of my treatments). We talked about my mother's final battle with cancer and how it was effecting me. After meeting with a social worker, on my doctor's request, she (my doc) came back and gave me an assignment. The assignment was to find something that brings me joy in life. I thought of calling an escort service and telling them to send Joy over. Ah-har-har. Really, not joking, this thing my doctor did for me was good. I need joy and I need to feel excited about life. They make pills for that sort of thing, I know. But I don't like going to that park anymore. Maybe I need to just go walkabout.