One Widow’s Dream

Since Don died the first half of January that leads up to his sadiversary has always come with an undercurrent of emotion. With the first anniversary of his death it was easy to label that undercurrent as grief. No one gets past that first anniversary unscathed. Then came years two, three and four and the raw grief got replaced with regrets, sadness and memories. This year is the Big Five and I suspect it’s the marker where people who haven’t lost a soulmate think those of us who have should be “over it” by now. And you know what I say to those people? Mind your own P's and Q's.

One common factor that comes with the first half of January each year since Don died is an increase in dreams that have the power to wake me up. Last night’s episode had me and Don speeding on a busy freeway in a strange city and making a wrong turn. We pulled off the freeway in an industrial part of town and stopped on a dirt road next to railroad tracks where day workers that looked like characters from the Walking Dead were milling around. Don got out of the car to ask for directions and everyone he asked pointed him on down the narrow road. As he walked in the direction they pointed, I got concerned he’d get out of view and I got out of the car to follow. I made it twenty yards away when I remembered the keys were still in the car but I was afraid the ‘walking dead’ were going to steal the car as they crept closer to it. I woke up at a point where I was standing half way between Don and the car and I couldn’t decide what to do.

According to the online Dream Dictionary being lost is pretty straight forward: “To dream that you are lost suggests that you have lost your direction in life or that you have lost sight of your goals. You may be feeling worried and insecure about the path you are taking in life.” It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to know that’s spot on. The dictionary didn’t have a listing for the ‘walking dead’ but a ‘zombie’ seems close enough and this is what it said about them: “To dream that you are attacked by zombies indicates that you are feeling overwhelmed by forces beyond your control. You are under tremendous stress in your waking life. Alternatively, the dream represents your fears of being helpless and overpowered.” I’ve never dreamed about zombies or the walking dead before and I’m not a fan of dark genre fiction. Is there a difference between the two? All I know is when a kid came to the door on Halloween wearing a creepy zombie mask I wanted to dump the whole dish a candy in his bag, lock the door up tight behind him and go find a plush kitten or puppy to hug.

After going to the dream dictionary, I went to a website that hosts widow/widower blogs---something I rarely do anymore---and right on the first page were two 5^th anniversary posts. Bingo! That’s what I was hoping to find. One blog author says “sometimes it still sucks” and he was venting about still getting mail addressed to his spouse and says he’s stilling dealing with “the IRS fallout” from the death of his first wife---he remarried in year two. The other 5^th anniversary blog writer says she accepts that she still experiences "intense loss and grief from time to time" but, she says, that acceptance gives her the strength to engage in life. And engage she did. She even went swimming with the dolphins but she also saw a grief counselor around her 4^th anniversary. Her bottom line message was that engaging in life is a choice.

New topic: Do you believe in signs? I broke my Fitbit on the first day I started my new diet program. The only way I’ve ever been able to get my eating under control after a long, out-of-control period is to document everything that goes in my mouth, aiming to keep my calorie count under 1,000. Doing that on a Fitbit dashboard is wonderfully easy. And I’m addicted to checking out my sleep patterns every morning. Is the broken Fitbit a sign I should just accept myself the way I am---a diet and fitness failure? Is it a sign that I love my gadgets too much? After all, I still have paper and pens in the house that I could use to track my eating, but who’s going to count my steps and the calories they burned? All I know for sure is I’d better buy a new Fitbit before the inauguration because our new president is sure to start a trade war with China. Boy, don’t I sound like my mother! “Remove the zipper before you put that dress in the rag bag. If another war comes along we won’t be able to buy them.” Light bulb moment here: It’s the incoming administration that brought the zombies into my dream, it wasn't a dream solely triggered by my 5^th sadiversary! Why does our subconscious mind manufacture dreams like that but it won’t allow us to go back to sleep to see how they end? Did I catch up with Don or go back to the zombies? I guess the fact that I woke up at all is the answer. LOL ©