Only In Dreams.




I had a dream about Dan last night. I don't usually dream about him, only a small handful of times. At least that I can remember dreaming. I guess it's possible I dream about him every night and I just don't remember those dreams.  This was quite a dream, it stuck with me all day and I don't think is going anywhere soon.

In my dream:
Baby Girl and I were sitting on the couch at my in-laws house (the house Dan grew up in) watching TV. Baby Girl was playing on my phone (she loves to do that). My phone started ringing. I glanced over to see who it was and it said Dan Stults (fyi I got a new phone about a year ago and Dan's number was accidentally erased so it's not even in there). Baby Girl started to walk away as she answered the phone "Hi Daddy" very causally, like it was nothing, like she says that every day, like she used to.  I could hear him through the phone. "Hi Baby Girl whatcha doing.?" I got up and followed her because I wanted to talk to Dan too. She was pacing back and forth in the bathroom. "I miss you daddy when are you coming home" Then he said it, I could hear Dan's voice crystal clear like he was just here yesterday, he said. "I miss you too Baby Girl. Don't worry I'm coming home soon"

I grabbed the phone out of Baby Girls hand "Your coming home?" I said in amazement. "For real your coming home?" You see dreams are funny and even though I was chatting on the phone with my dead husband I knew perfectly well that he had been dead for two years and two months and two weeks. And he just said he was coming home. "Yes Jennifer, I'm coming home now. I will see you soon!"

And then I woke up. It was 4 am. I laid in bed closing my eyes as tight as I could trying to go back to sleep so I could finish the dream. So I could get to the part where he came home. So I could get to a part where I could see him and touch him, where I could feel his breath on me as he hugged me. Of course you never get back into a dream once you wake up from it. So that was a futile effort. Then I laid in bed and tried to replay the dream over and over and over so I wouldn't forget any of it. Then Baby Girl woke up and it was time to start my day.

It was only a dream. Dan said he was coming home. It was only a dream. Dan said we would see him soon. It was only a dream. It felt so real. It was only a dream.  I wish with every atom of by being that it was true. It was only a dream. Dan is still dead. It was only a dream.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Milestones in grief

Image
                                                                Dan and I around 2011 I wrote this for a writing contest about milestones. Writing about every grief milestone would take a book and I had a word limit so I couldn't do that. I tried to do the really big ones. I have not had a particularly eventful life. When I was eight, my parents moved, but they took me with them. At ten, I had a pretty bad accident, but I came out of it fine. My husband and I met at sixteen, and at nineteen, we went against all good advice and got married. I gave birth to our daughter when I was 27.   I loved our boring, normal life. We were living our happily ever after. I was a stay at home mom, Dan was finishing up grad school. Everyone says this kind of thing at funerals, but Dan really was the most amazing person I’ve ever met in my...
Read more

PTSD is not for sissys

Image
Do you know what PTSD is? Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I bet you think you do.  You might say something like "ya its what people that go off to war have" true. You might say "It's when people see really terrible things" true. A few really smart people might say "ya my friend watched her beloved husband die and now she has it" very true. If you are a mental health professional you might say "ya a child who all of a sudden has a dad who dies will have it" also true.  I was telling a friend once about how life is now without Dan and she said "wow it's almost like you have PTSD or something." No not almost, we do. But what exactly is it? Well it's complicated. I can't describe it for baby girl because I am not in her mind (unfortunately) but I can try and describe it for me. I am hesitant to do so; it's not an easy thing to talk about, But if we are going on a the point of this blog is to be therapeutic for me and h...
Read more

My therapist told me to start a blog

Image
My therapist told me to start a blog. She thinks I have something worth while to say. Something? Yes. Worth while? I guess we will find out. I mean, everyone and their dog has a blog, right? What makes me so special? At the very least, I hope it will be cathartic. Here is the short story, which I will elaborate on in future blogs. Eighteen months ago, I was 34. I had a 7 1/2 year old daughter. I was married to my high school sweetheart, and we were still madly in love with each other. It was like a fairy tale; we liked to compare ourselves to Wesley and Buttercup from The Princess Bride. We were in the process of adopting a baby. And then we weren't. And then it was gone. In a second, literally one second, he was gone. My husband Dan died, extremely suddenly and unexpectedly. All day long he was fine. We went downtown to our favorite bookstore, we ate lunch, we had dinner, we went to bed at 11. At 11:15 I called 911. At 12:01 am on January 12, 2015, Dan was pronounced dead on...
Read more