Dreams

DREAMS October 20, 2008


Waking up from a bad dream can spoil your whole day. I try to shake this feeling by convincing myself that it was only a dream, but that doesn’t always work. When I was a little girl my grandmother taught me that when I had a bad dream to, “Thank God, that it wasn’t true”, then she would say that most of the time your dreams were the opposite of what was really happening . I did find that to be true, but grandmother isn’t here anymore when I need her.

Sometimes I can hear someone speaking to me as I am waking up. It seems very real at the time. The good dreams are about the years I was growing up with my two sisters and Mom is always there like she was at that time. I also enjoy dreams about having young children and the early years of my marriage with Ed. I haven’t had a good flying dream for a long time. It’s like being in a hot air balloon and floating over the earth and enjoying the beautiful scenery. I’m glad I can dream about this because I would never take a hot air balloon ride. I also like the dreams about Europe, except the ones where I get separated from Ed and the tour group. I can’t speak the language and I don’t know how to get back to the hotel. It’s a great relief to wake up.

We don’t have any choice what our mind and memory will put together for a dream. I think of our mind as a computer compiling all of our memory from our past. Then different parts of that memory comes together in odd ways and that’s why it doesn’t make sense. Another repeating dream is I have to be somewhere and I can’t get ready to be on time or I have unexpected company and I don’t have any food in the house to offer them. I have also visited places where I have felt that I may have been there before. I think these places may have appeared in my dreams. That’s a little spooky. I don’t intend to dwell on any of these things because I can’t explain them, so I’ll keep in mind what grandmother said that to be thankful they are not true.

Last night I had a dream about pain in my knee. The doctor had drained some fluid off of my knee and then he gave me three shots one week apart to relieve pain. Yesterday I was thinking that my knee was feeling a lot better and the pain had gone. I go to bed and dream that my knee was hurting. I could feel the pain very vividly and when I got up this morning I realized the pain I was feeling was in my dream. This wasn’t fair to have pain that was not there.

One of my strangest dreams occurred after Ed passed away. I woke up in the middle of the night and I felt someone in my bed hugging me very tightly. I was trying to get away because I knew Ed was not there. I ran into the bath room thinking I must have over night guests and someone has mistakenly gotten into my bed. I looked down to the driveway to see if there were any cars parked there. The driveway was clear. I opened the bathroom door and peeked to see if someone was in my bed, I was afraid to return. The blankets were messed up and I had a problem believing that there was no one there. So I ran out and quickly turned the main light on. That was the strangest dream I have ever had. If I hadn’t been so frighten I would have believed that Ed had paid me a visit. So we have good dreams and bad ones. The next time I feel that someone is in my bed I will say, “Hi Ed, I have been waiting fo you”.

Audrey Teal Kaminski