When We Dream of the Dead

Do they dream of us too?

Twenty years. My son lived 20 years. Then he died. And now, I dream of him.

In dreams, he comes and goes. Some nights he plays a starring role. Other nights, he haunts the fringes of my sleep.

Sometimes I remember that Roman was there, in my dreams, but I can’t recall the exact storyline. What remains is a presence, an inkling of his short life.

Some nights, he doesn’t appear at all. These nights are part relief, part sorrow.

I haven’t yet figured out what these dreams mean, if anything at all.

To be or not to be —

Hamlet found dreams insubstantial, partially formed, pieced together from fondness and fantasy: “A dream itself is but a shadow.”

Hamlet, that complex man of certainty and vacillation, that child of action and inertia, that dreamer and doer, found little resolution in life and dreams — and what to make of both. Perhaps he too was bothered by this ambiguity of living, commingled with truth and fantasy, fiction and nonfiction, imagination and reality.

Like all of us, Hamlet found life too real. His dreams seemed foggy and unformed. Waking, sleeping — living, dying — thinking, dreaming: these elements confounded him. Their paths crisscrossed too often, interweaving the Now and Then, the Future and the Past, and, ultimately, Life and Death.

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

Dreamland

The borders between the real and dream worlds are smaller than we think.

Dreams. Dreamland. What is this land of dreams? There’s no knowing. Dreams may be ours, yet we do not fully own them. They are formed of remembrance, and narrated by strangeness. When we close our eyes, we leap or soar or plummet. A dreamscape offers intimacy, communion, or alienation — sometimes all at once.

In dreams, the landscape is familiar, yet the story remains unknown.

While we wake to a life that demands black-and-white attention, our dreams seduce us with more sinuous ghosts.

In my dreams, my son appears. Sometimes I wake and remember. Other times I forget, but sense the shadow of his touch.

Visit

This morning, I remembered. I woke in those early, darkened hours when the clock glares red numbers into an empty room. My head throbbed, not just at the temples but all around my skull, the pain dully dancing from nose to nape and back again.

I opened my eyes, and remembered.

I walked near a field. Workers hoed a field, pulling bright green vegetables from the black dirt. I stopped to watch. Then, Roman appeared. He stood by the workers, but apart.

“Mom,” he said.

I don’t remember if I spoke. I don’t think I did.

“I have to go,” he said. His voice was steady and low. “But if I could, I would stay with you, go to class, have you cook for me. It’s what I wanted.”

He stepped close to hug me. He wrapped his arms tight around me. The hug was strong, unhurried, patient. He released me, and then stepped back.

“But I can’t stay. I’m sorry.”

And then I woke.

My head throbbed. It pulsed with a deep red ache.

I lay there for a while, half caught in the scene. I wonder at the thinness of gauze between dreams and desires, and how transparent the lining is between this world and the next. I wonder if wishes could find substance. If longings can journey across universes.

Mostly, I wonder if love can travel the distance between Here and There. And whether the dead can feel it too.

I think about death and its bolted gates. Life’s liminal spaces.

But mostly, I wonder this:

When we dream of the dead, do they dream of us too?