Lucid Dreaming

I've recently started sleeping to the sound of a white-noise program called Brain Waves, which is available as an iPhone/iPad app.

The program is supposed to influence one's state of mind according to the setting selected by the user by playing sounds that are perceived by the brain in such a way that normal brain waves that occur in various mental states are simulated to promote those states in the listener.

The setting I've been using is called Lucid Dreaming.  (You can probably see where I'm going with this.)  Since starting to use this program, I have had lots of dreams, many not really that interesting - but also a few about my dad.

Last night I dreamed that he and I were running together along a country road, counting telephone poles that we passed as we ran, and at some point my dad said, "I guess you can just go along thinking about how many more poles you have to pass before you get to the finish, or you can stop counting and enjoy the scenery instead."  The rest of the dream ended up being pretty monotonous,  with just the two of us running together in silence enjoying the run, but I woke up thinking about what he'd said to me in the dream and the application of those words to my life these days: rushing from deadline to deadline, working to get past one event to the next, thinking mostly about how I can pass through the things that bring me stress or that make me focus more on my grief.  The point is clear: I can choose to continue doing things that way, or I can choose to focus on the good and enjoy each day along the way.

                Good run, Dad; thanks //

Dreaming, Part 1

I think it is common in grief to have a change in sleep patterns; oftentimes I think those who are grieving require more sleep than usual, and just as often I would be willing to be that they end up having trouble sleeping.

Both of these things are definitely true for me, even this far out from my dad’s going on ahead.  The really ironic thing about it for me is that, unlike so many cases in which the person who is ill sleeps a lot, my dad hardly ever slept during the ten weeks he was sick.  After awhile, like my dad - my mom, my sisters, and I were desperate for a good night’s sleep, but, also like Dad, we just dealt with the non-sleep because, well, we had to.  

It would seem that, once I was without the struggle that was the cause of the sleeplessness, I would be able to sleep.  But now, I think the grief and maybe even the physical and emotional manifestations of the grief are the barriers, and so regular, quality sleep still evades me for the most part, even despite trying different sleep medicines and in spite of the time that has gone by since Dad's death.

Last night, I went to sleep easily but a couple of hours later entered into a dream so disturbing that I feel I have to get it out of my system to keep it from (hopefully) haunting me or recurring.  In the dream, my whole extended family was in a van, driving across a bridge that went over a big river.  We were talking about how we should hurry and get home because Dad was supposed to meet us there and we knew he wouldn’t be late.  As we drove further across the bridge, we looked out the window and saw Dad, dressed in running clothes, running across on the shoulder of the bridge in the opposite direction.  He looked tan and healthy and happy, like he was on a mission but thoroughly enjoying himself.  He was running into the sun, and he didn’t see us as we passed by on the opposite side of the road.  Others in the van said that he would probably run to the other side of the bridge and then turn around and come back so that he could still meet us at home, but I argued and pleaded for the van to be turned around so that we could catch up to him and bring him back with us. “Something’s wrong!” I kept yelling.  “He’s never late and so I can’t understand why he’s running the wrong way!”  but we kept driving. After we got back to the house, I checked the phone to see if he had left us a message that would give us an idea about what he was doing since he wasn't where he was supposed to be, but the phone wasn’t working.  I decided to go up in the attic and check the phone line, and, when I did so, I discovered some loose wires sticking out.  I was desperate to repair the line so that Dad could contact us, but when I tucked the loose wires back inside the sheath of the cable, I was jolted by a shock so severe that I was thrown to the floor and couldn’t speak or move.  Over and over, I tried to make noise so that someone downstairs would hear me and help me.  All I could do was whimper quietly as I lied there in the floor; I was devastated by the knowledge that I couldn’t help Dad, and I was overcome by a sense of utter helplessness.  

At this point in the dream, my husband woke me up. “You’re dreaming,” he said.  Tears were running down my face, and it took me a couple of minutes to believe I wasn’t still lying paralyzed on the attic floor.

I think dreams are the mind’s way of helping a person to process things that have happened.  It isn’t hard to see the symbolism in the dream I had last night, from wanting to turn the van around to pick him up to wanting desperately to have a way to communicate with him.  Am I processing; am I breaking through some of the grief?  I can only hope.

Road Trips

 My parents took my sisters and me on lots of road trips when we were growing up.  Both sets of our grandparents and the rest of our extended family lived in states other than where we lived, and it seemed like we piled into the station wagon and hit the road fairly often.

Like lots of families during that time period, we traveled on a pretty low budget.  We packed a cooler and a bag with things like colored pencils and paper and a deck of cards, and we were good to go.

We took lots of camping trips, did a good bit of sightseeing and touring, went to Disneyworld and several water parks, and made it to the beach on several occasions.  All of that blurs together as Good Time Family Fun in my Memory Bank.  There were, however, a few specific events during my childhood involving family road trips that I remember as standing out the most, things we did while traveling as a family that I think about again and again, memories that always bring a smile to my face.  I’m not even sure of the exact timeline of these.  All three happened as part of the travel my family was doing - they were side-shows, far removed from the main event; they were spontaneous; and they were unforgettable.

We lived in Albert Lea, Minnesota, when I was in kindergarten.  I loved that house for lots of reasons; I learned to ride a bike without training wheels in the front yard there, my younger sister came home from the hospital as a newborn to that house, and it had a cool laundry chute that went from the second floor to the laundry room in the basement.

One day, our parents were packing the car before we embarked on another road trip, and my sisters and I were in the den gathering up a few books and toys to take with us.  The TV show that was on came to an end, and the next thing that came on was a movie: “The Wizard of Oz.”  I had never seen it before, and I was mesmerized from the start by the tornado scene, the characters, the way it went from black-and-white to color, and the music.

About 30 minutes into the show, my parents completed their last-minute preparations for the trip.  I’m sure they were ahead of schedule for the time they had planned to depart on the trip; my dad hated to be late and went to great effort to make sure our family was on time wherever we went.  He came into the den and started his battle cry of “Load up!  Time to go!” but then saw us sitting on the floor, as he termed it, “glued to the TV.”  When he realized what we were watching, he and Mom sat on the couch behind us, and we watched the rest of the movie together, with Dad singing along to every song in the movie: from “We’re Off to See the Wizard” to “The Merry Old Land of Oz” and “If I Were King of the Forest.”  The movie and the music were great, and I’ll never forget how time seemed to stand still as my family sat there in the den that day, entranced, entertained, and together.

A few years after that, my family had moved to another state, and we were in the car again on a road trip.  I don’t remember where we started or where we ended up, but I do remember the best part of that trip:  Dad was driving along the highway while the rest of us looked out the window.  I don’t know who saw the little carnival in the hillside first, but I do remember the moment when all of had it seen it.  My sisters and I oohed and aahed at the Ferris wheel and the other rides we saw.  It looked like fun, but we were On the Road and On a Schedule.  Probably no one in the world was more surprised than we were at that exact moment in time when, without a word, Dad pulled onto the two-lane road at the foot of the hillside and started driving towards the carnival.  I remember thinking I was dreaming.  He pulled into the gravel parking lot, parked the car, and said, “Who’s up for some rides?”  Better than Christmas!

 When I was a pre-teen and even into my high school years, my family celebrated New Year’s Eve by staying overnight in a Holidome about 100 miles from where we lived.  My sisters and I each got to invite a friend, and, once we got to there, our parents pretty much unleashed us in the open space inside the hotel.  We ran in the halls, jumped on the beds, rode up and down the elevators, went into the sauna room, ordered room service, watched music videos on MTV (which we weren’t allowed to have at home), and swam in the indoor pool.  Just enough freedom, lots of fun, excellent people-watching (one year we watched a woman swim laps in the pool for hours in a shower cap) – it was perfect.

I’m not sure if there is a specific lesson from or a point to looking back at memories like these, other than just remembering and thinking about how much fun we had together as a family.  Maybe there’s a little bit of a “Take time to smell the roses” lesson in there, and that we certainly did.  We definitely appreciated each opportunity, each day, and each other along the way, and for that, as well as the memories that time will not allow us to forget, I will be forever grateful.

I remember riding in the backseat of the car with my sisters, barreling

down the highway on family trips, listening to Dad sing this song.