its 6.30am… still dark outside. i was woken by a bad dream.
its unsettled me, enough that i couldn’t, just couldn’t, lie back down and try to get back to sleep. i had to get up; to write, to get it out of my system.
I dreamed that Jess, our beloved Jess (that’s her in the pic above, the dog), had died.
the circumstances of the dream, in which she died, are pretty ridiculous – we were fleeing pirates, in a small rowing boat, in a lagoon full of piranas. see what i mean? nevertheless, her death felt real enough, powerful enough, that i had to sit up, wake up, scootch down the bed where she was conked out at our feet (she always snuggles up there during the night) to give her a kiss and a cuddle.
i hate dreaming of death. i’ve done it before.. i think the mind prepares you for death, for coping with it. its unsettling though.. especially when its the death of people you know. i’ve woken up crying before now.
i must sound.. like i dream this way all the time. I don’t, most of the time i don’t remember what i dream. but my subconscious obviously is working overtime. I do know what it is.. i got news yesterday from my mother that one of my aunts is not very well. i say not very well in typical english understatement; what i mean is, she’s dying. She’s not a particularly close Aunt, its been several years since i’ve seen her, but she looked after me sometimes when i was little, and i used to spend boxing day at her house most years when i was a teenager. I have a lot of fond memories of her, my Uncle, and my cousin – her son. She’s quite a formidable lady, when i got together with Michiel, we used to tease him that she’d have to give him the once over, bark worse than bite, kinda thing. i shall miss her.
She’s the first of my parent’s generation to go. People around me have died before, but they’ve been older.. of my grandparent’s generation.. and somehow its not so bad: they’ve lived their life. Death comes to us all.. upsetting, yes, you grieve and mourn, yes, but… its expected. sooner or later.. its expected. As the saying goes: only 2 things in life are constant: death and taxes.
But this is different: she’s just a year younger than my mom. she’s a grandmother to a new baby, her son married just 2 years ago. she has so much yet to do, so much yet to live for. its too soon. it brings my parent’s mortality that much closer. i guess in my mind they’re.. just there. logically i know no one lives forever but.. they’re just there, you know? In some ways.. i take them terribly for granted. That they will always be there. that they’re a constant.
And the few times that constancy has been rocked.. have been terrible. this is one of them. I guess its no real surprise that my mind has racing as much as it was.
Of course, me being me.. i ruthlessly suppressed this earlier, when i got the news. when am i going to learn that it’s better to let it go, to cry? it took a dream about my dog to get me to let go. maybe that’s the lesson the subconscious is looking for. letting go, grieving.
maybe now i can sleep. Excuse me.
