The Paw of Condolence

This dream springs from the same  space in the unconscious that creates religion. Do our loved ones go to “another place” when they die? This dream says yes. Whether or not that's right in any objective sense is unknown and unknowable; nevertheless, it is consoling.
The Dream: I am a young teenager, staying at the seaside with my family. I look out from the screened porch, on the second story of the old-fashioned beach house. I see my younger brother Greg out in the ocean, clinging to a railing. I call to him, “Stay there! I'm coming!” I quickly change into a swimsuit and run downstairs and into the sea.

By the time I reach the railing he's gone. I search frantically, unable to find him, then head back to the beach house for some help. I go upstairs and find my sister in law, who is about my age. As we start to head down the stairs, two pet lions are ascending, obscured by a cat flap. I hear the first one before I see him. He says, “He's gone to another place.” I'm frightened when I hear this, thinking it confirms my fear that my brother is dead. I'm also surprised that the lion has spoken. The lion emerges through the cat door and repeats, “He's gone to another place.” He looks at me empathetically, as if he is sorry for my loss. He holds out a paw, gently, claws retracted, to shake hands.

I look out at the sea, its waves forming a beautiful pattern, white caps going on and on in v-shape formations. It's beautiful but hazardous. I don't think Greg could have survived its power.

My sister in law and I go to the deep beach, filled with tourists sunbathing and swimming. We search and search, to no avail. How will I tell Mother? I wonder, feeling her grief as I think about it. How will I tell my other brother? The words I choose echo the ones he used to tell me about Greg's death when it happened several years ago: “The worst thing you can imagine has happened.”

Interpretation: I had this dream near the anniversary of the deaths of both my brother and my mother. Two feelings are intertwined, grief with the hope inherent in the lion's godlike message. In one of C.S. Lewis' famous books, the lion represented Christ as the symbolic sacrifice that defeats death.  For me, the lion symbolizes the inevitable sad way of things in the natural world. He tells me that Greg has gone to another place. By stepping outside his own natural role as a mute and savage beast, the empathetic lion implies that there's something we don't know. As I experience the fearsome beauty of the sea, I know that this mysterious life force is incomprehensible. Yet there is solace in realizing the possibility of a dimension beyond those I know: this other place the lion speaks of.

Stiff

How does the Psyche  incorporate a society's shift in values? This dream illustrates the process.

The Dream: My mother and I wander through a morgue. We come to a man's body, his head uncovered. With his buzz cut gray hair and square jaw he looks as if he might have been a Marine in the 50s. His color is that of the dead—and clearly he is—but my mother says to him, “If you're not dead you'd better get up, now!” I can see that she doesn't realize he's a corpse, and I try to lead her away.

Interpretation: According to Jung, the father represents society's values, and there are echos of my father, who worked with the Marines, in this figure. With his buzz cut and Marine bearing, the dead man represents the old order, the social framework of the 50s. This social order is dead in the contemporary world, and yet the inner mother part of myself, the part that has inculcated my parents' values, can't quite except it. The part of me that accepts the vast social changes that have occurred since my childhood tries to gently lead “mother” way from the past.

Do You Say “No” to Yourself?

The Dream: I am telling Clark about Bill Cunningham, the New York Times fashion photographer who has been photographing the Paris fashion shows since 1957. This inspires me to create some fashion designs, and I say to my mother, “I'm going to put a group of 12 designs together and send them to someone.” I have the idea that this might get me some clients. Mother says, “Oh, no one would take them.” I respond, “We can't say 'no' to ourselves before someone else does. Don't you see how that limits us?”

Interpretation: This transparent dream reflects my shaky self-esteem, but also shows that I'm fighting back against it. It was probably triggered by an invitation to submit some work to a competition. I've sent them submissions for several years and have never been accepted. (In the end I did submit something, and my piece was included in their publication.)

A Disappointing Holiday

The Dream: I'm not hosting the holiday this year; I'm at someone else's house. I wonder about the friend who has celebrated with us for so many years. Where has she gone this year? The food at this feast is perfunctory: a bare bones meal with grocery-store preparations. It's not the way I would have done it.

Interpretation: This might be an example of Freud's concept of wish fulfillment gone wrong. I might wish to be relieved of the responsibility for the holiday, but once that wish is fulfilled, as in the dream, the result is an unfulfilling event—with the play on the word “full” duly noted. The food is inadequate, and the friend who represents my inner wounded child has been neglected. To mother my wounded child I must be a mother, in other words, take on the responsibility of hosting the event. Only then will I be happy with the outcome.

The Unconscious Mother

The Dream: I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when I come back my mother is in my place. She is almost diagonally across the bed, with her head at the foot. I try to rouse her to get her into a better position, but she remains more than asleep, almost unconscious. I am concerned that I am unable to move her.

Interpretation: Mother is lodged, inappropriately, at the root (foot of the bed) of my unconscious. While I want to reposition her—I am unable to. The dream tells me that I've got things exactly backward, upside down. And that I've relinquished too much of myself (my proper place).

Regret

The Dream: I am in someone's house; it's either a rental or a home exchange. We are thinking about staying there for a while. There is a small washer and dryer in the garage. I point it out to Clark; it reminds me of the set my mother got me when I lived in an apartment. I start thinking about how good she was to me, and feel that I didn't do enough for her as she aged and became infirm. I am filled with regret, and my eyes fill with tears.

I hear another washer/dryer going, and I realize there's a much larger set in the kitchen. We go there, and I am struck by how wide the counters are. They are marble, in golden ocher tones. The lady showing us the house seems to empathize with my sadness.

Interpretation: At first I thought this was a straightforward dream about my feeling bad that I was not a good daughter, that I hadn't given back enough to my mother who was so good and so giving.

And I'm sure there's some truth to that. But there is another truth as well. I had the dream shortly after I had seen a manipulative mother in action. Of course the dream might be pointing out the contrast between my mother and this other mother—but at the same time it caused me to notice some parallels; for example, both mothers had a core of helplessness that required others to step up and take care of them. My resistance to helping my mother might have come from my fear that her need could never be satisfied, but could only suck me into an abyss from which I could not escape. I'm sure my mother had no conscious wish to limit me—quite the contrary—but there was a subtext that I found suffocating. That doesn't excuse me for not getting over it, but it does explain the resigned tone of many of us, when, even as adults, we say, “Yes, mother . . . . “

Can I Live with Mother?

The Dream: I am with my aunt and my mother. They tell me that Mother is coming to live with me. I realize they've mentioned this once before, and that I had failed to respond, hoping the request would go away. This time there's no ducking it. I am annoyed that they've told me rather than asked me, and I envision myself as the old maid daughter living with her mother. I feel that her close proximity is a threat to my autonomy. In the dream my mother is youngish and attractive, and I'm a young single woman.

I can't see how to say no, or get out of it, and I wonder what sort of sex life I'll have. Will she accept my adult sexuality or will I never be able to spend the night with anyone? I say to her, “You can stay with me, but you can't be too bossy.” She looks surprised that anyone would think she's bossy.

She says, “We can move into Grandma's neighborhood. It will be nice and inexpensive.” My heart lifts at this idea. Grandma's neighborhood has become arty and trendy. I think I'll enjoy the area and meet interesting people. Suddenly I'm excited about the thought of a move.

Interpretation: The dream was inspired by a piece that Helen Hwang wrote about her relationships with her mother and grandmother. She had been closer to her paternal grandmother than to her mother, and at a point in her life she realized she needed to connect with her mother. In the dream I become happier and stronger when I connect with my maternal ancestor, my mother's mother. The dream is a step in my working out my own autonomy. In the dream I confront who I am as an adult with my now internalized “mother.” Can I live with what I've inherited from my ancestors and still be myself? The dream tells me that I can: I learn that I can be in the place I want to be even with Mother in my life. She has been integrated into my psyche to the point that we both want the same things; I unconsciously realize that at this point in my life she does live with me, even if not physically, and I'm getting the two of us in sync.

What's Cooking?

The Dream: I'm at the stove. It's a gas stove with openings where some of the burners go. A toddler, a young boy, has stuck his head through one of these openings. His father, a Middle Eastern man, dark and hefty, is trying to pull him out. I take a softer approach, cajoling him, and he agrees to come out. Then I carry him around with me everywhere, feeling very maternal.

Interpretation: I'm in the kitchen, where raw ingredients are turned into food, symbolically a place of transformation. There could be something a little dangerous about the transformation about to take place, however: I might get burned. Something interesting that I'm strongly attached to (as a mother would be) is popping out, breaking through, in a surprising way. The powerful father, my inner forceful hefty man, seems foreign (Middle Eastern) to me. I don't think he will be the one to facilitate this new thing that is emerging, yet he, as the father, is clearly a part of it. It won't be forced, but will come out when it's ready, and then it will be an important part of my life (I'll carry it everywhere). The dream tells me to let things run their course.

It's Just Not "Me"

The Dream: My friend Joyce has mailed me a box full of things she has cleared out and no longer wants. I go through it and show a man's sweater to Clark. It's a nice sweater, but not at all his style. He doesn't want it, and I find I'm annoyed at Joyce for giving this stuff to me.

Interpretation: This goes back to a very old feeling. My dear mother didn't understand that she and I were two different people. She gave me lovely things that she would have been thrilled to get, especially as the poor child she had been. As an adolescent, I resented being given these things that I didn't want, that weren't “me,” and that, nevertheless, I was obliged to feel grateful for. I felt guilty about my inner resentment, and perhaps the dream has come to allow me to feel it without judgment.

The Bed and The Diary

The Dream: Part 1: I'm a child. I'm in a room with twin beds. My brother is meant to sleep in one; I'm meant to sleep in the other. I get into his bed with him. I think there's something wrong with my doing this, but it isn't clear to me what it is. I know I should cover up the action. Both pillows are on one bed; the other bed is pristine and clearly has not been slept in. Will Mother figure it out? I decide she'll only think I made my bed and my brother didn't.

Part 2: I'm an adult. I'm reading through an old diary that my daughter had left at the house, written on a stenographer's pad. In one part she describes an active and unembarrassed sex life. I'm very surprised that she had such a frank view of sex at such an early age. I feel uncomfortable about this on the one hand, but on the other hand I think that since all has turned out well, perhaps it's okay. In some parts of the diary I notice a different handwriting and wonder if it's that of one of her boyfriends. I feel a certain dread—but also an attraction—toward reading what he wrote.

Interpretation: These dreams further the sorting out of the “mother” theme. The child/mother relationship is central in both. In the first I'm the child; in the next I'm the mother. In both Mother judges my spontaneous relationship to life (sex) and pleasure, and in the dreams these feelings are symbolized by a socially inappropriate relationship. The fact that I am not sure what might be wrong with being in bed with my bother tells me that the dream is pointing to a very early feeling. The dream uncovers (covers play an important role here!) my earliest sexual feelings and the child's dawning awareness of parental disapproval regarding them. The dream tells me that this has colored my feelings about pleasure: some part of me believes it's something to be leery of.

In the second part my child has developed and explored her sexual feelings despite mother's queasiness on the topic. She keeps her diary in a stenographer's notebook, an interesting touch since stenographers write down what others tell them. What proportion of my view of life and sex was created by the society I live in? There is a role reversal in the dream sequence as I go from child to mother: I become the owner of  my own attitudes and mores. A kind of freedom from the influence of the mother of my childhood occurs as the mother in the second part concludes that perhaps it's okay that her child has freely explored sex.

Mother is Tired

The Dream: I'm in a house like the one I grew up in. My mother is there, as are a lot of family members. There's lots of chaos and activity. Mother and I are happy to be with everyone, but also tired from the strain of entertaining. Trying to keep the house in order with so many people carelessly putting their stuff everywhere has worn us out. When everyone leaves mother and I chat about not wanting to be the mother anymore. We're tired. There's too much to clean up after the party.

Interpretation: The dream was probably triggered by my anxiety over a large home improvement project and my desperate attempt to keep the house and garden in order during the process. I'm not happy with being “mother.” The dream points out that we, my introjected mother and I, see our role mostly in terms of the onerous responsibility to clean up after others. “Mother” generally refers to the entire feminine role of nurturing as well as house keeping, but our fatigue is specifically caused by the chore aspect of the role. The party is fun; the people are loved and respected; it's the dull cleaning up and trying to keep the space under control that's the problem. The dream is telling me to pay more attention to the people and the party and less to keeping order.

Can't Hit Them When They're Down

The Dream: My friend Martha has let me know, without directly saying so, that she is very angry with her husband George who suffers from a debilitating disease. It's an anger too deep for words, and she expresses it by holding a baseball bat in one hand and tapping it against the other.

I'm in the house; my mother is with me, as are others. It's a party of sorts. I have a drink, and my mother makes a “joke” about not saying anything about my reaching for a drink for fear I'd whack her with a baseball bat.

Martha and George show up. Martha is seething at George. I tell her the comment my mother made, thinking it's a hilarious joke. Martha talks about anger toward the ill and helpless, pointing out that it is very difficult to express. At this point she is so angry at George that I wonder if she will leave him, and part of me would be happy to see her free of him and all the obligation that caring for him entails.

Interpretation: At first I thought this dream was about unexpressed anger toward my husband, but when I asked myself who in my life had been ill for a very long time—and who did I resent because I couldn't express this anger and frustration—I came up with a very different answer. I couldn't leave my ill mother or mother-in-law (be free of their needs and influence) while they lived, but the dream points out that it's okay to be relieved to be free from those obligations now.

Who Did I Leave Behind?

The Dream: I'm about to get into a full car. My brother Greg sits in the spot I traditionally sat in as a child, behind my mother. There's no room for me, so I want Greg to scoot over, but instead he gets out of the car, leaving me to sit next to my friend Polly. Greg now appears to be a child, about 5 or 6, and he's happily playing with a spotlessly clean dog with white fluffy fur. I'm having a hard time seeing him and the dog from where I sit so I shift positions to get a better view.

The car pulls away, leaving the two of them, and I begin to realize this was a vision because I am now aware that Greg has died. I say to Polly, “Did you see Greg?”

“Yes,” she says. I get some comfort from realizing that others have seen him as well.

I want to verify this so I ask her what he looked like. “Like you,” she says. “He is small, with sandy-colored hair.”

“How old is he?” I ask. Has she seen him at a different age?

“About 18,” she says.

“No,” I say. “Greg is very tall, and has dark brown hair and dark skin.” I can't think of how to describe his skin color. It isn't olive, but it isn't fair like mine. “He is pale in the winter, but very dark in the summer. His eyes are very dark brown.”

I'm disappointed that we didn't see the same “Greg;” it takes away from the reality of the “event.”

Interpretation: After we die, what's left of us? I'm having a hard time seeing my brother now that he's gone. The divergent images in the minds of two dream characters imply that our “vision” of the departed is so personal that it might have no relationship to reality whatsoever. I look for comfort from my vision; I want “my” Greg to be real. I soon learn that what I see isn't what Polly sees: he differs in every way.

I've pushed Greg out of the car, in a sense. We, the living, have left him behind. He's no longer going where I'm going. His dog companion in the dream, representing my brother's animal (his earthly, physical self), is white (the original color of death) and idealized. Greg seems happy where he is.

A Failed Artist

The Dream: I'm with my mother and two friends. We start to head up to my walk-up apartment. As we are climbing the stairs I say to my mother, “I guess you're wondering why I always live in a 5th floor walk-up?” I mean this as a joke on the effort the stairs require, but it's not actually a negative to me. “Not at all,” says my mother. “It's because you are a failed artist.”

I'm stung by this, but don't feel I can deny the truth of it. I would have preferred she acknowledge the accomplishment of what I've achieved—a certain level of skill, undeniably--than to focus on my utter lack of commercial success. Then too, I don't think commercial success is what I'm after. Nevertheless, I see the career building strategies of a successful artist friend in a new light. It least she isn't seen as a failure.

Mother collapses onto the floor, and I'm afraid the effort of climbing the stairs has given her a heart attack. I bend over her, very concerned, but not ready to call the paramedics: her color looks good and I think she'll snap out of it. I feel, once the crisis has past, that I owe my friends an explanation. “I've been through this so many times before,” I say.

My friends give me gifts. One is a fused glass piece, a tube sprouting a plant. It's roots are in the tube; an exotic flower drapes out.

Interpretation: Ha! My conundrum in a nutshell: one part of me, the internalized critical mother, wants to know why I'm not a commercial success. In our culture money equals value, and if you can't show a profit you and your product must be worthless. Another part, the one that is happy to live on a higher level and doesn't mind the difficulty that entails, sees my art making as a spiritual practice and has no interest in monetizing it, only wants a bit of recognition for what she's accomplished. My critical mother collapses from the effort of the ascent, but I know she'll revive. After all, I've been through this many times.

The friends, protectors of my calling, give me a work of art: nature transformed into a glass object that could last--or might just as easily break.

Struggling Against the Current

The Dream: I'm in a small boat by myself on very rough water, but near a seaside resort. I work to get back to to this inviting shore, but am swept along the coast to a different spot. I look for a place to put the boat back in so I can try again. I think that a particular spot will work once I get past the breakers, but Clark points out the breakers are caused by submerged rocks. I see my plan won't work and walk along the shore, pulling my boat, looking for a safe place in put in, although I know even if I'm successful it will be very difficult, with the wind and current against me, to get back to the sunny shore.

Interpretation: The sunny shore represents a time of protected childhood with loving parents, a time when they were alive. The playful resort shore is a reminder of happy family times playing in the surf with my brother and mother nearby. I can 't go back; I'm struggling to get there but it's impossible. I'm also struggling against the tide of my own overwhelming emotions in the face of the reality of this loss, and the ultimate loss of all.

I face these feelings in the dream, and the practical part of me, my Animus in the form of Clark, discourages my attempt to return to the past by pointing out that it won't work. The dream tells me to accept the reality I can't change.

The Howl

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.

Can I Nourish the Group?

The Dream: I am with a niece and some of her friends. They begin to talk about what a good cook my niece's mother is. “Don't they think I'm a good cook?” I wonder. I also praise my niece's mother, sincerely, for being very capable and helpful in an unassuming way. I think about my having cooked a meal for the group when we were last together, and I wonder if I made a bit of a fool of myself, offering to cook when someone else had superior skill.

Interpretation: My insecurity about what I have to offer is on display in this dream. In the dream it might have been a mistake, hubris, even to offer to cook. Not only am I concerned about how I will be judged, I'm concerned about having put myself and my inadequacies forward. It's hard to believe that at this stage of life I am still oppressed by feelings of inadequacy—but there it is. Having recognized the feelings, maybe I can start to get past them.

Phantom of the Opera

M

The Dream: I am with my mother in a subway. We are planning to meet my father and my daughter at a play. The subway we're on is due to make a special stop to accommodate opera goers. We are running a little late, and I'm getting anxious. The subway operator announces that we are going to skip the extra stop, and I'm relieved at this time saver. I had thought our meeting was at 8:30, but mother tells me it's not until 9:00. Again I'm relieved; we have a little more time to make it. 

“Oh, yes,” says my mother derisively, “you and your father will be getting nervous, but your daughter and I won't be concerned.”

Mother is an insulin-dependent diabetic. To add to my anxiety she announces she needs food (to avoid a life-threatening insulin shock). We get off the train and go in search of, but nothing seems right or appropriate. The few food stalls we find have the wrong sort of food.

Apparently we do find a place where, as I continue to worry about being late, an Italian woman serves me a bowl of soup as I sit/lie on a twin-size bed. The soup looks better than I had expected, with lots of julienned strips of vegetables like zucchini. I eat while still in the bed, and spill some. It makes a mark the color and consistency of pomegranate jelly. I point this out to the woman and tell her it can be cleaned up easily; I start scrubbing with pretty good success.

The Italian woman's husband comes in and the woman signals to him that outsiders are present. They speak in Italian. Soon they switch to a combination of English and Italian. Meanwhile I become aware that my mother is incapable of feeding herself. I sit down next to her at a small circular table and feed her.

Interpretation: Even with the best of mothers, and my mother was as good as it is humanly possible to be, some dregs of unhappiness will settle to the bottom of the mother/child relationship. In this dream, years after her death, I look at some of this murky sediment. The first thing that struck me about the dream was my mother's derisive comment. She did have this hateful way of criticizing me occasionally; rather than acknowledging that there might be a reason for my anxiety (or other negative feeling) the message was that I was wrong to feel it. The comparison to my father in the dream reflected a frequent jab as well: comparing me to my father was an indirect and implied rejection. She must have felt that she was the superior one; he was not the one to emulate. Here (on the subway) we see the subterranean conflicts of the mid-century marriage. We're running out of time. I do feel that, especially after my younger brother's death.

Despite Mother's superiority she needs to be taken care of. The diabetes of the dream was real, and it had us all running in circles. She was very brave about it in many, many ways, but the threat of insulin reactions , horrible to behold, was ever present and frequently happened. The need to get access to food could be, and often was, a problem. This created an on-going anxiety: another sort of running out of time.

I eat, forgetting the purpose of the stop for food was mother's need. Am I demonstrating my selfishness? I've certainly been accused of it, directly and indirectly, by Mother. The foreign language being spoken tells me that there is something I don't understand. When the language switches to a combination of English and Italian, I begin to get it, partially: I must feed (take care of) Mother. Now I have to ask myself, "Is what I've come to understand that I do feed mother, or that I should feed mother?" She has been dead for 8 years. Is it appropriate, at this point in my life, that I feed her? Or am I living with an unpleasant burden that I have created for myself by continuing to feed her? Time is running out, and if I want to skip the work (the opera) and get to the “play” I probably need to sort this out.

I Stink

The Dream: We are looking for a recipe for pecan pie. I remember that it is delicious, and that my mother made an excellent version. I look through lots of cookbooks, focusing on one with beautiful pictures rendered in a soft technique, with simple shading of basic shapes. I wonder if this could be computer generated, although it doesn't look it. Then the artist speaks: she tells me she does all her work by hand, the old-fashioned way.

I have retreated upstairs and am lying on a bed with the covers loosely over me. I fart very loudly a couple of times, hoping no one downstairs has heard. Clark comes up a minute or two later and lifts off the covers. “Whew!” he exclaims, and I'm embarrassed.

Interpretation: The day before I had this dream I got an email from an artist acquaintance cataloging her recent accomplishments. Her current gallery show has been well received and she has been reviewed by influential critics. Her success is well-deserved, but that doesn't mitigate my reaction to it: envy combined with a massive feeling of inadequacy. In other words, I stink. My unconscious uses an over the top, humorous image to show me there might be some hyperbole in these feelings.

The “old-fashioned” techniques the dream artist uses refer to the classical but dated art that I prefer and cling to. The pecan pie is something delicious from the past that I'd like to recreate. Who knows? I might yet find the recipe if I keep looking.

Guest Dreamer: Uninvited Guest

Today's guest dreamer, Myamystic, is looking for the key that will unlock her dream. It's found by looking beyond the waking life people who populate her dream to figure out which part of her the characters represent.
The Dream: My dream kicks off with me visiting my boyfriend in Mumbai. I enter the house with a key, I don’t know how I got it. The house is in total darkness and empty. I then realise that I am in his parent’s house and am about to leave when the parents return . . . . The mother gets all worked and questions me.

I apologise and leave with my bags.

Carla's thoughts: It's certainly possible that a dream like this is about Myamystic's feelings about her boyfriend's parents, or about how she feels society judges her relationship. She will know if that is the case. It's also possible that the dream is about her own feelings, and in this analysis I'll explore the dream from that point of view. As usual, I'll talk about Myamystic's dream as if it were my own.

In this dream I'm working through my feelings about intimacy. How do I feel about this relationship? How do I think it will go? The key represents a new insight. The "uninvited guest" of my dream title refers to these unconscious thoughts intruding into consciousness. I've been in the dark about my own feelings when it comes to closeness and trust: I am exploring unknown territory here, and that's why the dream is set in someone else's house.

I am in his parent’s house. All the people in a dream have been created by the dreamer and have more to do with her than with the waking life people they represent. So I will look at what I have in common with the dream mother. Like her, am I worked up, suspicious? Do I feel that someone has invaded my space just as the dream ego has invaded this woman's house? Perhaps I'd like an explanation for things about my boyfriend that I don't understand, or about feelings I have that I've pushed away.

That I apologize tells me I might be wrong here. There's something I haven't seen (I've been in the dark). The luggage I take away represents my emotional baggage, things from the past that I'm still lugging around. I think my dream wants me to look at these things in a new way in hopes that it will be the key to my avoiding an empty house (loneliness).