A Tricky Operation

Ancient wisdom has said that the sins of the father are visited upon the children. This dream seems to be saying that the sins of the parent are perpetuated and passed down, over and over again.
The Dream: My mother-in-law, M, is experiencing some symptoms. Her mother sits her on top of a kitchen counter and cuts out her heart and lungs. M doesn't seem to experience the sort of pain one would expect from this. M and her mother, accompanied by M's daughter carrying the organs, board an ambulance and head for the hospital. The doctors put back the removed parts and explain to M's mother, who seems sweet and well meaning throughout, that this was the wrong thing to do; nevertheless, she clings to her belief that she did the right thing. Years later M is in an old folks' home where I visit her. She recounts this story, her eyes full of pain.

Although M herself has been a very difficult person and caused her family a lot of pain, I feel a new empathy for her and, while I can't overlook the effects her own bad behavior has had on her children, I now have compassion for what she went through and wonder if it might have been responsible for triggering her own cruelty.

Interpretation: Metaphorically the heart is the place of feeling; we often say that something is heartfelt, or that something broke our hearts. The lungs enable us to cry out. We yell at “the top of our lungs.” In this dream, the sweet mother inflicts serious damage unwittingly, unknowingly, convinced that she is doing the right thing. Worse than what she has done is her refusal to acknowledge that she was wrong. She clings to her beliefs about the correctness of her behavior, even in the face of clear evidence that she made a mistake, and these deeds travel down the generations from parent to child.

M is my avatar in this dream, and I begin to understand my own lapses as grounded in a time when I could not speak (yell out) to defend myself, and so I lost heart. I ignored and suppressed my pain, creating the possibility that I would someday blindly lash out at my own defenseless child. At the same time the dream warns me not to be too convinced of my own rectitude. The bright spot in the dream is my new found compassion, and the hope that it will enable me to forgive the guilty, and, at the same time, protect the defenseless.

The Scream

The Dream: I am lying on a bed. I put my head into a long tube and scream. My father comes into the room and asks me if I scream often. “No, I say, “this is the only time I ever screamed.”

“Heart attack,” he says.

“Well,” I say, “you’d better take me to the hospital.”

All dither around. No one seems to grasp the urgency of the situation. Someone asks if I feel any pain, and I say, “Only some tightness in my chest.”

Interpretation: I’ve got my head up my ass (in a long tube). There’s something emotionally painful (attack in the region of the heart) that I’m refusing to see. I need some help (the hospital) in order to get this off my chest.

Union of Spirit

I awakened remembering a dream from twenty years ago with new insight into its meaning.

The Dream: Stephen, a very close friend, is in hospital, dying of Aids. He looks ghastly, covered with sores. “Let’s make love,” he says. I am appalled and horrified. “Now?! I say, “Now you want to make love?” As much as we loved each other, because he was gay we had never been lovers.

I found out shortly after having this dream that Stephen had, in fact, died.

Interpretation: Stephen once criticized me for having a “literal” mind. If I could have seen beyond the literal meaning of what he was saying to me in the dream, perhaps I could have been a better friend. Had I been able to spiritually embrace him instead of shrinking from him, perhaps I could have eased both his passing and my grief. Why did I remember this dream now? Aunt Peggy’s declining state has brought to the fore the difficult issue of mortality.