Psychically we heal by fits and starts. Here I slide back from the equanimity toward death that I was beginning to achieve in my last dream.
The Dream: I get a phone call from my older brother. He is crying and inarticulate, howling. I understand with a sinking feeling that Mother is dead.
Interpretation: My mother had been dead for more than seven years when I had this dream, but my younger brother had died a few months before. In the dream I feel terror at facing the mortality of those I love and, ultimately, of myself. I've lost all sense of the hope Stephen had offered in the previous night's dream.
Just when we think we are at a point of accepting the death of a loved one, the grief is poured over us again. The good news for me in this dream is that I do have contact with this grief - my brother and I are connected on the telephone. Grief goes beyond words, which in my dream, is why he can only howl. My psyche is processing my grief in these dreams. A spiritual director once told me that if we are to work with dreams (ours and others) we need to lose our fear of death. One step forward, two steps backwards. I believe our dreams present us with the opposites in different dreams, whether on the same night or different nights. For me, in this dream, I am recognizing and moving through the grief. Perhaps another dream will show me yet another way to cope with my grief.
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