I periodically dream that my husband returns from the dead. That is not an unusual experience in grief. Our loved ones are embedded in our souls and psyches and our dreams reflect many aspects of our grief journey: our wish to see them, our struggle to accept their loss, our fears and worries about the future, to name a few. They may also present us with existential questions about death. In my case, accepting death has been particularly difficult. My husband disappeared at sea nearly six years ago. Neither he nor his boat were ever found. Despite knowing consciously that he will never come back, in my subconscious his return is totally plausible. Sometimes we seek answers in our dreams: Is he OK? Does he know I love him? Can he please give me guidance from beyond? And, my question, what happened? My dreams often reflect the challenge of not knowing how he died. I keep hoping he’ll tell me in my dreams.
Sometimes we have what are called visitation dreams, where we are overjoyed to see our loved one again and we relish the sleep reunion. Most grievers yearn to see their loved one. To once more be able to be hugged and comforted, to have a conversation or share a laugh. They feel very real. What was interesting about my recurrent reunion dreams was that, after we hugged, I always said to him: “How did you get back? How are you here? You died!” I then ask, “And how will I get your Social Security back?” I am always aware of feeling anxious when I say that last part. When I wake, though feeling sad, I also feel relieved he is not here. I understood the sadness but why relief? At first it seems obvious – reviving Social Security, after they have officially declared him dead, would be a nightmare.
But there is more to it. The dream reflects both my wish to see him and my fear of his return. I would be faced with the impossible task of creating the undead. What would I do with all the turmoil I’ve been through since he died? We would not be the same people. I could never go back. Waking delivers me from that terrifying dilemma. As is often the case, dreams can have multiple meanings. I assumed the question of Social Security was also about how I would support him financially. A shadow of guilt always accompanied that concern because I thought it meant I was worrying about money when the most important thing was — I had my husband back. It wasn’t until I dreamt it for the third or fourth time that it occurred to me, it was a pun. My husband, also a psychotherapist, used to tell me that dream language often contains puns. I knew that money often represents security, but it wasn’t until I was sharing the dream with a friend that I suddenly heard the words differently. It was about my “social” “security.” I was asking how I could ever feel socially secure again? How could I get that back? I haven’t had the dream since I figured that out. At least not yet.
When he first died, I often had dreams that he was in the room but couldn’t respond. His back was to me, and he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak. I think this represents our trying to understand death because we know the dead are unable to speak. I begged him to tell me what happened, but he never would. It was as though I was invisible. Slowly over time, he began speaking to me little by little, often from a distance. We would be separated by rows in a theater, or he would be walking by with someone else. What struck me in those dreams is that I always felt like we were in the process of a divorce, not dealing with his death. We never discussed it, but I felt very hurt. As though he’d chosen to leave me. Couldn’t we just try? I kept saying, “If you would only talk to me, we can work it out.” In life we could always work things out if we talked about it. In my dream it made no sense that he wouldn’t do that. It was heartbreaking. I discovered that others who had lost a significant partner or spouse sometimes also dreamed of divorce, not death. In Delia Ephron’s wonderful memoir, Left on Tenth, about the sudden loss of her husband, Jerry, and then her fight for her own life, she writes about wanting to dream about him. Then she does. Jerry says, “I want a divorce, I’m leaving you.” She says “Well, I know you want to divorce me, but we can talk, can’t we? I mean, if I want, can I just come over and talk to you?” Her dream felt so much like mine. We were both trying to maintain connection to our loved ones.
A few years later, my husband appeared in a dream where I again understood he wanted a divorce. But this time I said: “You have to ask me; you have to say it.” So, he did. He asked me for a divorce, and I told him I would grant him that. For the first time, instead of feeling hurt, I felt acceptance as I said it. This reflected my growth in the grieving process. I was coming to terms with my loss. But not completely. Perhaps the idea of divorce is easier to understand than death, and like with Delia, at least he would be still alive so I could go over and talk to him. It is so hard to let go.
There are so many changes that occur during grief: loss of identity, loss of a best friend, dealing with isolation, loneliness — it’s all so overwhelming. At first it is as though your entire internal architecture is thrown into chaos and you don’t know who you are or what the meaning of life is anymore. But, over time, amidst all of that, there is the emergence of a new sense of self, a different understanding of a meaningful life, a larger capacity to live with loss. I had one dream that particularly helped me understand that. This was about two years after my husband died on what would have been our 41st wedding anniversary.
Here is the dream: I walk into my house, and everything is gone. I’ve been robbed. Not only the contents of the house, but the floors are stripped bare of the carpets and the plaster is gone from the walls. It is completely gutted, down to the shear wall, down to the frame. I am standing there in the empty house, just staring at the shear wall. As I began to wake up, a thought drifted through my mind: “This is what grief is like. It takes you down to your bones.” I lay there feeling sad for a few minutes. But as I awakened more, a question arose. I wondered: “What is a shear wall actually?” I grabbed my phone and looked it up. “A shear wall is a support wall that gives strength to a building or a house to help it stay upright, or horizontal in the face of a lateral force or seismic event.” Losing a long-time partner or spouse certainly qualifies as a seismic event. Understanding the definition of the shear wall totally changed the meaning of the dream. I realized then that the dream was not only about feeling robbed and facing emptiness, but also about encountering my strength – I was staring at it, my inner shear wall. It was about both. It beautifully portrayed the complexity of the grieving process, the intense nature of suffering and the backbone required to withstand it. Not all dreams are so rich, but if you pay attention and take the time to reflect on their meaning, they can be powerful tools in your healing journey through grief.