Story Time

It has been quite awhile since the post with the story of my vivid dream and the hint that there might be another story. Maybe today's a good day to tell that other story.

This is a much more recent story about another dream. It was very different from the first dream, which just involved me and my unique experience with issues of life, death, and whether there is anything on the other side. On the other hand, after writing that last sentence, maybe it is more similar than different.

Anyway, it's hard to believe all this happened over a year ago. It seems like yesterday. My mother had been battling illness for a year or more, spending most of the previous 6 months between hospitals and rehabilitation centers.

She had gathered just enough strength recently to decide with Dad that it was time to return home to northern Indiana from Florida. She was escorted to the plane in Florida by Dad and my sister and brother-in-law for the trip to Indianapolis, where I met her and took her home.

Seeing her in the Indy airport approaching in the wheelchair, I was suddenly struck by how frail and sickly she looked. Maybe I had been in denial, but it didn't really hit me just how much her health had declined until I saw her being wheeled out from the concourse.

Chris and I took her home and cared for her as best we could until Dad arrived by car. Even though she was terribly weak and required near-constant care, I knew Mom was happy to be home. Chris and I then returned to our home in southern Indiana, promising to return to visit whenever we could.

Mom was able to stay home with Dad's care for perhaps a couple of weeks, before she took a turn for the worse and had to be hospitalized. The pattern continued that had been building over the past several months; she got stabilized in the hospital and seemed to be gradually improving in strength, then sent to a rehabilitation center to get the physical therapy she needed to hopefully allow her to return home again.

I drove north to visit her again in the rehab center, which was a poorly run facility that neglected Mom terribly. If it hadn't been for Dad's regular presence and pressure on the staff to do their jobs, the poor treatment itself in that facility alone might have hastened her passing. Places like that should be shut down - but that's getting off the subject.

During that visit at the rehab center, I arrived to find my parents in the physical therapy room. Mom was trying mightily to walk with only the aid of one of those aluminum walkers. She was too weak. My heart broke as she began to cry and apologize to me for being unable to do her walking exercises. But I did my best to hide my emotions and tried to be positive and supportive, telling her she just needed a little more time to get stronger.

Returning home again, I privately began to prepare myself for what was beginning to look like a real possibility for the first time - losing my mother. But, I buried myself in work and tried to proceed with life as usual.

Then it was a lazy Sunday afternoon. We were home, and there wasn't anything special going on, so I indulged in a nap. And dreamed.

Of course, it is common to dream when napping, perhaps even more than during nightly sleep. But this afternoon brought a truly unique dream. If the dream was generated by my own sub-conscious brain, I am very impressed by my brain's prescience, wisdom and compassion.

The dream started with me walking into the Intensive Care ward at the Goshen Hospital. I've been there before, so I recognized the floor. I walked over to my mother's room there, which was the last room along the wall to the left of the nurse's station. In the Intensive Care ward, glass sliding doors are used to give the staff visibility to the patients in the ward, with curtains used when privacy is needed.

Looking in, I saw my mother in the bed, surrounded by my dad, sister, uncle (her brother), and her nurse. She didn't look good, and those around her bed were somber. The door was closed, and noone looked up to see me or let me in, which upset me.

Then my mother turned her head and recognized me from her hospital bed. She smiled, and began to sit up, slowly and painfully. Somehow she was able to rise from her bed and walk over to me at the sliding glass doors completely unnoticed by the family members and nurse still gathered around.

She reached for me, and grabbed my hands in both of hers, somehow through the closed glass door, pulling me closer. She adjusted her hold and I felt her warm hands grasp my forearms while I held hers. She spoke to me with a smile, and a rush of emotions welled up in me of a mix of love, sadness, lonelinesss, and hope.

Suddenly she release me and transformed into a little girl of maybe 9 or 10 years old. She had her suddenly long, dark brown hair tied back into a pony tail, and her freckles became more prominent across her nose. She began laughing and joyfully skipping around the hospital room.

I awoke then, and was immediately worried that I could not recall the words she spoke to me in the dream. But I took two things from the experience; first, that my mother would die soon, and second, that she would be much more than OK.

About two weeks later, I was at her bedside as she passed away in the last room along the left wall in Intensive Care, along with my father, sister, uncle, and nurse (the same nurse from my dream). My other sister was missing from the scene, as in the dream, because she and her husband were out of the country in Peru.

Understand that, at the time of my dream, my mother was not in Intensive Care, I had never met the nurse, had not seen my uncle in several years, and could not explain why my other sister was not present.

Scientific or psychological explanations for this particular dream are fine. Maybe someone could even convince me somehow that there's a good explanation for the accuracy of my dream, it doesn't matter. Whatever the source, it brought me a great deal of comfort during a very difficult time. I have confidence that for my mother at least, heaven is returning to herself as a small child, able to run and jump and skip without a care, and especially without pain. And for that, I am grateful.