Ignorance IS bliss
I had a strange dream about A the other night. I have had visitations, too, but I really think this was a dream. All my visit-dreams with him make sense, and I never remember what we say, which is common, as I understand it. My regular dreams, in general, tend to be filled with negative emotion and are usually surreal. In this dream, he showed up in a tie, which is about as surreal as it gets; he wasn’t a tie guy.
In my dream, he was visiting at my house, and showed up wearing a shirt and tie and warm-up pants of a style I cannot imagine him ever owning. He wasn’t a formal dresser, but he had his own casual style and I liked it; in any case, he never would’ve worn such a ridiculous outfit. And he was irritated at me in a way he never was in life, and he seemed hurt. In the dream, I knew he was visiting, but I was busy with E, and A finally had had enough and came to tell me that since I was ignoring him, he was leaving. I tried to convince him that I wanted him there, but he was implacable, and sometime soon after that, I woke up from the dream or left it behind or whatever. I’m not quite sure; I was asleep at the time.
I chalked the dream up as an anxiety dream, emphasis on dream, because the interaction was totally out of character for him, and for us as a couple, both before he died and after; he does not lack for my attention. I’ve had a couple other anxiety dreams about him since he left, one about a huge church funeral for him (he was agnostic) where I was ignored by his daughter, and another wherein I dreamed we found him in a motel, and he had had a horrible stroke, but was still alive, staring at me as they took him away on an ambulance gurney, his eyes the only part of him that had not been paralyzed. I knew those were about my concerns about dealing with his family, and my own guilt and anxiety because it took me two days to find him. But other than those, all my other dreams of him have been pleasant, and I do believe several of them were true visitations. In those, I always know he’s passed, and I’m always glad for his company; I wake up never remembering what was said, but feeling loved and cared for. And as unpleasant as this dream the other night was, I was still glad to see him in my dream, moving, talking, alive. It comforts me to know that my mind took notes as I studied him in our time together, and can create him in that animated way, a way that looking at pictures just cannot approach.
I had already dismissed it as an anxiety dream, but this morning as I was outside, searching (without success) for my daily hummingbird, I began to think about it again. Hummingbirds have suddenly disappeared, and instead of the 3 I see daily, I’m lucky if I see one at dusk. Whole days have passed lately where I haven’t seen a single one. And while I’m far enough along this path to know that a single day sans hummingbird does not qualify for abandonment, I have grown quite attached to my hummingbird "mail" and am bummed when I don’t see one in its usual haunts.
It is that time of year when they’re doing what birds and bees do, and I assume that’s where my little birds are; they’re busy gettin’ busy.
But I have asked A to warn me if it gets to the point where he has to go on and do other things and cannot be so available to me, rather than just disappear on me. Again. Losing him once was more than enough.
The world of dream interpretation is murky at best, and never certain. It’s entirely possible that my missing hummingbirds prompted a dream where I live out the reality I’m afraid of—that he’s leaving me again. Or was he saying goodbye, just as I asked him to? Or was it none of the above? Who knows?
Regardless, I’m not ready to let go of this tiny little bit of daily encouragement. I don’t have him here. We don’t get to talk. As much as it has helped, a hummingbird sighting is certainly no replacement for my love, and even with the signs that keep me going, I’m pretty sure I’m not missing out on any part of the experience of loss. I’ve lost so much, and let go of more than I ever dreamed I would have to. This is, literally, such a small thing. Is it too much to ask that I get to keep this?
Maybe it was just a dream, and maybe my hummingbirds will be back once they’re done continuing their species; I saw one back this evening after all. I just don’t know about all this. I am the pendulum, swinging between early, raw grief, where seemingly everything was meaningless in the face of death, and now, where everything is so damn fraught with meaning, it tires me out. What I wouldn’t give for a nice dose of obliviousness.