The World of Dreams

It's 3:00 a.m. and I can't sleep.

Why?

Something Craig did once, some repressed memory, just popped into my head in the middle of a dream and woke me up. You know those incredibly lucid dreams where you actually acknowledge that it's just a dream while you are still in it? One of those.

Reminds me of that movie, Inception (not a good one for the newly widowed by the way). If you haven't seen it, I'm totally giving away the ending here so avert your eyes if you don't want to know.

Basically they have a way of creating a world that someone else can dream in so they can talk to that person (or essentially their subconscious) to find out all kinds of things. I am probably butchering this a little but the main character is so distraught over the death of his wife that his subconscious keeps pulling her into every dream world he enters, trying to find a way to be with her as long as possible. Only it's not really her, just a manifestation of his memories and feelings about her.

Needless to say, the concept is one I can relate to. Who wouldn't want to find a way to bring their loved one back to life, even if it was just the shadow of them?

Yes, I was that loud and annoying movie-goer who sobbed through this entire movie in the theatre.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before but I have been unable to really dream about Craig since the accident. I hear from other widows all the time that they have amazing dreams about their spouses, sometimes every night. That they see them, touch them, talk to them every night when they sleep. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hit with a little stab of jealousy every time I hear this. I've only had 2 dreams with Craig in them and they were quite early on and not particularly comforting.

In one he came back to me as a corpse after I had frantically been looking for him and he wouldn't react or move or even speak to me except to tell me that he really was dead. All the while I frantically tried to get the attention of the police officers to show them they were wrong. I kept shouting, 'Look! He's really here! He really is alive! I told you that you had the wrong body.'

In another, I saw him at the scene of the accident and he was battered and bloodied and reaching for me and all I could do was scream and try to get the blood and broken glass off my arms.

Yes, I have issues.

Clearly.

Anyway, even in the dream that woke me up tonight I did not see Craig. Merely remembered something from years and years ago. My subconscious clearly at work, trying to piece something together.

Even in our dreams we are haunted, I guess.