Somewhere to Stay

Earlier tonight, I fell asleep in my living room chair for about 2 hours. While I was asleep, I had a dream that I was alone on vacation somewhere warm, walking from house to house and hotel to hotel, trying to find a place to stay. Every place I came to looked special in some way - fun or beautiful or comfortable - but I could never find a person anywhere who could help me. At once place that looked promising and peaceful, I looked into the window of the closed door to find that it was empty inside, vacant as though it had closed or gone out of business.

I have no idea what a dream like this means, but I do know that when I fell asleep in the early evening it was still light outside and when I woke up later alone in my living room, there was darkness all around me. I was disoriented and lonely. It took me a minute to remember what time of day it was.

My dream was like living disappointment over and over. Every time I'd see a place that looked great, I'd have hope that it would be somewhere I could stay. I'd happily walk up to it to discover that for whatever reason, I could not. Disappointment would hit. Then I'd move on to the next place. On and on and on.

I am so close to the end of this first year of grief. So ready for transition and happiness and new beginnings. No disappointment.

I have a terrible, terrible headache, so I think I'm going to go back to sleep...this time in my bed.

Once Upon a Dream

This morning, I was having a nightmare and I couldn't wake up. I knew I was dreaming, but I couldn't awaken myself. My limbs were heavy, my eyes wouldn't open, and I felt sluggish and unable to break away from my dreamworld.

Please make it stop, please make it stop, please make it stop was thundering in my head and I was willing myself to get out of there, to end the dream. To wake. To be free.

I eventually woke up thrashing in bed, panting, cats aside of me.

And as my heart began to slow and I steadied myself in the real world, sheets tangled around me, I breathed a sigh of relief, because there is a difference now.

Before, when I would wake up from a bad dream, it would be to the heavy realization that my life was still a nightmare. I would lie there, deadened, anxious for relief from the bad dream that had just ended... but no relief would come, because life was difficult. Waking up brought no immediate rush of solace. Remembering my lot in life would hit me like a ton of bricks. And the dreamworld nightmare would fade, but it wouldn't be replaced with better emotions.

Now, it's different.

I woke up from my nightmare, breathed that sigh of relief, and felt ease. Joy. Gratitude. Love. The sunlight hit me in bed and I smiled. Thank God it was all just a dream, I thought. Relief flooded my heart. Good things are here. And even better things are coming.

Visitation

Last night, I had a visit from Rick. I had blogged and I was watching TV with the cats. It was about 11:00 pm and suddenly a loud crash sounded in the kitchen. I jumped a mile and so did both cats. Completely freaked out, I went into the kitchen to see what had happened.

There was a metal cookie sheet lying on my stovetop, because I had made mozzarella sticks earlier and had left the sheet there to cool. And right there in the middle of the cookie sheet was a little bear. One of the bear salt and pepper shakers that Rick had bought me since we are the Bairs. The crash was the sound of the bear dropping onto the cookie sheet. The thing is, the bear salt and pepper shakers weren't in a place where they could have fallen onto the cookie sheet...or placed that strategically.

I took a photo of the event with my phone and laughed as I texted my friend Jennifer to tell her excitedly what had just happened since I knew she would still be awake. It's such a Rick thing to do. And I was pretty certain it was his way of telling me to go the hell to bed.

Well, last night... for the first time since he died... I dreamt about Rick. It was, unfortunately, the kind of dream you wake up from and feel all mixed up and sad, though. In my dream, I discovered that Rick wasn't really dead at all. He had instead been staying at a rehab place of some kind and was getting well. I was so glad to see him, because I thought he had been dead. I was telling him about how I had been blogging for almost 3 months and that now it was all unnecessary because I wasn't really a widow. I was telling him that everyone thought he was gone and we had to explain it to all of them.

Then I woke up, confused and hurting. It wasn't real. He is really dead.

And just as my mind was about to say, "He is really gone," I thought NO. He isn't. That's what the loud little bear and the dream were all about. He's never really gone.