dream

Maybe 3 times a year, I have a dream so powerful that I remember it when I wake up. When that happens, I do my best to write it down before it vanishes. Wrote this this morning:

Dream – packing for a trip, a bit frantic, getting everything into a small suitcase, and Anna is helping me. Though there’s panic, it’s pleasant too, I’m going home and I’m looking at things I love as I put them in the suitcase. But there’s a sadness – I’m packing my teddy bear which has been damaged. The head has been torn off and is all that remains. Anna tries to fix the situation – she finds a hairy bear’s body that will fit and attaches it. But it’s the wrong fur, wrong colour and texture, and I say I’d rather just have the head than have my bear with the wrong body.

I find other things at the last minute – my thick mauve sweater – and yet there’s lots of room to put them in. I’m aware of the pressing deadline of the departure and the fact that Anna will be making the same journey herself later and will have a lot more things to carry, and I won’t be there to help her.

Have been thinking a lot about death recently – read the book “The thing about life is that one day you’ll be dead.” A dear elderly friend has told me he’s got early stage dementia and lots of changes will be in store. I think this dream is connected to that – to my eventual final journey without my daughter.

Sitting here on a quiet Tuesday morning, the snow falling, the furnace rumbling, the coffee warming my belly – my daughter’s new happiness with the father of her son, my son’s adventures, my own - oh I do not want to leave this life.