But the dream that woke me up this time was of my husband. He’d come back from a long separation---like death in my awake life, duh--but he’d been lost in the wilderness in the dream and it took him a decade to get back, but he couldn't find me right away. We only reconnected after he'd finally bought a house. He took me to see it but in the dream I was obsessed with writing down the address so I could find the house again and I desperately wanted a key to that house but I was debating in my head: Should I ask one or wait for him to offer a key? It was similar to a dream I had the end of summer about finding my long-lost husband in a match box and worrying that I wouldn’t be able to find him again. I don't think it's a big leap to conclude that in my subconscious mind I believe we'll reconnect in the afterlife...if there even is one...but I'm worried that we've changed so much we won't stay connected after we do find one another. A few days after Don died my sister-in-law said she could picture him in heaven holding court with a bunch of adoring women sitting at his feet listening to one of his long-winded stories.
I was hurt and replied, "Thanks a lot for planting that image in my head."
She laughed, "Don't you want him to be happy in the afterlife?"
"Not that happy!"
Finally, I had to answer nature’s call but then I went back to bed. It was 5:30 and I tried to let sleep wash over me again, hoping to see the ending of the dream. But that never works. I laid there with tears in my eyes, feeling lonely and alone. No one knew me as well as Don did and no one ever will. Poor me. I’m surrounded by friendly people and I don’t let any of them in past the metaphorical front door. When you meet someone at 27 and spend 42 years sharing secrets, hopes and dreams and building memories together there’s no time left to replace that kind of trust in another human being when you meet at 80. People do it, I know. But it often makes the media when geriatrics meet and marry and half the time they knew each other before they both took other spouses. I’m too cynical to buy into that plot line of life. That’s like saying you’re the same person at 80 as you were at 20 something. I’m certainly not and I wouldn’t want to be.
Related question to ponder: If there is an afterlife and Don died at 61 and I die at 80+ will the same cynicism apply? Does the key in my dream represent this dilemma, the uncertainty that we'd still be together? Will I just be another one of the ladies sitting at his feet being entertained by one of his stories? Life lesson here: Be careful what you say to widows about their spouses being happy in heaven. It's been ten years and I still can't dismissed that image planted by my silly sister-in-law.
Another new topic: Did I mention we got our big community table back? If so, I have to tell you it only lasted a week and a half before the two tables for six were separated and turned back around. The timing for when we had our fun table back suspiciously coincided with when the director of marketing was out sick with Covid. She’s the same director of marketing who had a fit over us having a jigsaw puzzle table in the main lobby/hub and she’d had it moved to several different places before a bunch of residents went over her head to the CEO and got it put back into center of all everything.
The puzzle table is a popular gathering place, even those who don’t work on the puzzle come over to see it’s progress or we use it as an excuse to talk to someone who is working on it. Me, I’ll go to dinner fifteen minutes earlier than my reservation and work the puzzle while I wait, others do the same before classes that they’re attending or to wait for the mail truck. One couple practically lives at the puzzle table, and while four people can easily work at one time, I avoid them. From my living room window I can see into the lobby across the piazza and I have a clear view of the puzzle table. It’s rarely without someone sitting or standing in front of it. I’ve even seen the security guard working the puzzle in the middle of the night when dreams wake me up and I can’t fall back to sleep. If it didn’t require me getting dressed to building hop, I’d be at the puzzle table along side him when I can't sleep. He's my prototype for a leading character in the murder mystery romance book I'm writing in my head. ©
I'm still laughing at that picture. Great advice! I'm so sorry your sister-in-law said that.
ReplyDeleteMe too and I found it quite by accident.
DeleteI've peed numerous times in my dreams, but still when I wake up I reach down there to see if I'm dry. I always have been so my lucid dreams haven't quite been close enough to reality.
ReplyDeleteMine are, I wake up and have to rush to the bathroom. Evidently it's a common dream.
DeleteI had to chuckle at your description of the puzzle table and its location. I totally agree--everything you said is spot on, having lived in a gated 55+ resort community, I would go over in the evening and work the puzzle while my husband was across the room playing 31. I never quite grasped the scoring of that game but did enjoy listening to everyone chatting about this that and the other while I worked the jigsaw puzzle. The library was in the adjacent room and there was also a billiards room adjacent to the card room. Love that place.
ReplyDeleteWe don't have a library or a billiards room but our sister campus does and that sure bothers some people living here.
DeleteThis brought tears to my eyes. I still grieve for the loss of my husband. I have no idea about the afterlife...is there one??? But in my present life, I am of the same mindset as you. One and done, as I like to say. We had a good marriage, and the thought of starting over with someone new is nothing of interest to me. It takes so long to develop the emotional closeness that sustains a relationship. I focus on being grateful for the happiness we shared for so many years.
ReplyDeleteI'm still finding my way as a widow. I feel alone much of the time. I have a lot of interests; I still travel (by myself) and enjoy the arts. Most weekends will find me at a classical music concert of some sort. But as you so aptly said I don't let anyone through the "metaphorical front door". It helps to have others around, and activities of interest. But the emotional intimacy of marriage will remain in my dreams.
Carole
You and I are not alone in our thinking. I'm guessing 3/4 of the widows here have the one-and-done attitude when it comes to men and even finding good women friends. Keeping busy with lots of interests is not a bad way to live...even though at times I get restless.
DeleteWhat IS it about puzzles? Even people who don't much like doing them can't resist stopping and trying to find a piece. I just got a new one given to me -- a photo of the Queen from her Coronation in the abbey (or an abbey background), purple robes and all. I don't usually like photo puzzles but hey, it's the Queen! That'll take care of me for the next three months!
ReplyDeleteI've had those dreams where you don't want them to end and you wake in tears and can't get it back no matter how hard you try. You make a good point about Happy in Heaven when it gets down to a partner! I wouldn't want Rick to be too happy either!
Seems to me that facilities like yours should listen hard to the residents on what they want and where they want it. You're paying big bucks and deserve that respect. My two cents!
There issue with our big talk is they say it's too hard to train staff on how to serve a big talk of people who come and go at different times. There is a shortage of low income workers in my area of the country and even though they pay above the average here, retention is a problem. Being in a college town I'm betting your food industry jobs get filled easily.
DeleteI can do a 500 people puzzle in 3 days because I can't leave them alone.
You probably know that jigsaw puzzles used to be called 'dissected maps.' In the very early 1800s, that was the name given to "maps or pictures mounted on board and divided into more or less irregular parts, to be joined together as a puzzle." According to the venerable Wiki, "dissections were produced by mounting maps on sheets of hardwood and cutting along national boundaries, creating a puzzle useful for teaching geography. Royal governess Lady Charlotte Finch used such "dissected maps" to teach the children of King George III and Queen Charlotte." I vaguely remember having a wooden puzzle of the U.S. when I was a kid, with each state being one piece.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know that! Interesting. I bought one of these puzzles of the United States for my husband's rehab after his stroke. My niece collects those children's wooden puzzles which where popular in the 40's and 50's. I had one of Humpty Dumpty.
DeleteHa ha, I've had those in the night pee dreams. I am usually in a mall, and can't find a functioning toilet. When I do, I go, but only in my dream for soon I tell my companion that I need to find another toilet as I still had to pee. Not looking forward to the night when the relief lasts and I wake up in a puddle.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure SIL meant well but I can see you not wanting him to be "too happy."
My S-I-L had no filter or common sense the entire 42 years I'd known her. But she never would intentionally hurt anyone.
DeleteThankfully I do wake up with the pee dreams except for that once. And I always have to beat a path to the bathroom. LoL
So many of us are in the same boat, there really is very little to differentiate between us.
ReplyDeleteDreaming of my husband and finding him hard to find or losing him, or running after him. tick
I don't even think there is an afterlife but somehow I am still sure I will be with him again some time.
dreaming of peeing. tick
rushing to the loo tick
not really wanting to meet anyone else tick
5 years on and I still miss him dreadfully. Sometimes I think it might be good to live in a compound like you do, but then I remember what an old curmudgeon I am and how few people I really like.
Should we have a blogworld widows Zoom getting together?
I don't really believe in an after life but still there are mysteries I can't explain so I will be happily wrong if there is one.
DeleteThere are lots of curmudgeons around places like this. You wouldn't be the only one. Sometimes I think we all take turns being the grumpy one.
Somewhere in the cyber world I think there already are zoom groups for widows, but I'm guessing they'd be for newly minted widows.
Our dreams are such strange episodes. Science still doesn't definitively know why we have them, and the interpretations by psychology are varied. Medications can cause them; lack of sleep can cause them; even some foods can cause them. Because of all these variables, I tend not to give too much weight to my dreams.
ReplyDeleteI read everything I can get about dreams and dreaming and I used to keep a journal of my dreams. I've been remembering my dreams for decades. I do think they can tell us something about what our sub-conscious mind is mulling over or working on. I don't think "cause them" are the right words to use regarding medicines, lack of sleep and dreams but rather those things make it easier for us to remember our dreams when we wake up.
DeleteI didn't have a marriage like yours as I divorced him after 33 years. I can't imagine wanting to date anyone after putting up with his crap for all those years.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe in an afterlife - it just doesn't seem logical to me. I am glad that you have so many nice memories of your life with Don. To me that is the "afterlife" - you keeping Don's spirit alive with your loving thoughts of him.
I can't imagine why your SiL would say such a hurtful thing to you. My Mom would say she is a "witch with a B" (my Mom didn't like to actually use bad words but she got her meaning across)! :)
When I first became a widow and it seemed like it didn't take much to see something that would trigger a memory. I remember thinking how hard it would be to have those memories triggers if the spouse who died was an abuser. My memory triggers back then were the bittersweet kind---good but unwelcome because they'd make me cry--- but they eventually turned into sweet and welcome.
DeleteMy sister in law knew my husband since he was young teen and knew he was happiest when he was telling stories. She was known for saying off the wall stuff like that.
An afterlife doesn't seem logical to me either other than for a week or two before a dead person's energy is absorbed into the world's energy. Too many spooky things have happened in the first week or two after loved ones have died not to believe a spirit can linger a bit. I should write a blog about that.
Oh, Jean, I wish you would write about the spooky things that happened. The morning after my husband died I was cleaning out his bedroom after the guy from hospice came and got the hospital bed. Everything looked so forlorn so I moved back in a club chair of his and brought a floor lamp down from upstairs to put next to it. I put a new bulb in it and it worked fine, but then it just quit. I half jokingly said out loud, "I guess you don't want that one." There was another small lamp on the table next to me that's one of those activated by touch. It came on by itself without me touching it. The thing is, a day or so before he died he tried to turn it on but he couldn't. He said since it takes galvanic current from our skin to make it work, he must not have any life energy left for that. I think having it come on by itself was his way of showing me he's got that energy back.
DeleteThat's exactly the kind of thing that happens to widows in the first week or two that makes me a believer that the spirit/soul hangs around for a while before our energy is absorbed into the atmosphere. Glad you had that experience!
DeleteAnd another thing that happened that day was my daughter went to the funeral home to finish some paperwork for the cremation. My husband had always dismissed the notion that they get every bit of the person's ashes and that there aren't any left over from the previous cremation. He didn't care about that and joked he wanted to be "mulched around the roses" anyway so it didn't matter. My daughter has always had ESP experiences. She was listening to the funeral home director go on about how meticulous they were in the process and she said she could hear my husband (her step-father) scoffing and blowing raspberries. (He was good at that. Lol) She said it was hard not to laugh about the competing conversations.
DeleteI actually found some unburned twigs and leaves in the bag of ashes and when I total that to a funeral director at a different place, he got really upset and wanted to follow through with the crematory. It had been a year earlier and it always bothered me. We finally concluded that he funeral director split his ashes so the original box could be buried at the cemetery and put in a bag for me to put in other places. I think he grabbed a plastic bag that had some kind of floral arrangement in it. Took me a whole year of wondering....
DeleteThis post got to me. I’m a widow almost 10 years. The marriage was great the first 17 years..not so much the last 11 before he died. Not awful, but changed.
ReplyDeleteI don’t really believe in any afterlife..I think it’s a pipedream to make it easier on our hearts. But if an afterlife were to be somehow true and not in any religious sense, I would be hesitant to meet up with him again..I’ve changed a lot in those 10 years and have gotten much more of a sense of freedom and return of some self esteem and independence. Plus I would be afraid of some sort of rejection, so I’d rather it not be true. Just my feelings and I know we all believe differently.
Kinda like you can’t go back to the past and pick it up there…
And in no way do I have any interest in being with another man…not enough time for real emotional intimacy to develop (I’m 75) and I like my freedom too much. I do miss him at times, but not some of his criticisms and controlling behavior that came with retirement.
Luckily I don’t dream often and they don’t have much depth. I wouldn’t like that.
In my view the afterlife is a promise some religions make---sort of reward for the pain and suffering people live with in life. Slaves come to mind, the free at last thing. I see lonely widows holding on to that promise of meeting up again as if nothing changed. But I agree with you. people change at different rates and there is no going back in time.
DeleteI think dreams have a purpose, even though the jury is still out. We sure do want to hold onto the good ones and can't wake up fast enough from the bad ones. I remember a conversation I had with my mom, following my father's death. They had met and married very early in life and loved each other deeply. She struggled without him, and one day the tears rolled down her cheeks and she told me she sure wished she could dream of dad. She was afraid of forgetting his voice and his essence. I believe she only had one dream of him, right before she passed. She lasted 15 months after dad died, and her cardiologists told us she died of "broken heart syndrome" (the medical term is Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy).
ReplyDeleteLove can be such a powerful bond. I hope you continue to dream about Don. (That was my dad's name, too). And I hold onto the belief that we will be reunited with our loved ones, someday, somehow. I don't understand how it might happen, but I'm not giving up that hope!
Thankfully we don't have to give up our hopes. I had to google Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy. I can see why it's called 'broken heart syndrome' and I do believe we can make ourselves sick by the way we handle the hand we're dealt in life. Sounds like your parent set the bar high when it came to finding a loving bond.
DeleteThis gave me a chuckle, I often dream about looking for a toilet which wakes me up needing to pee.
DeleteIt fascinates me that our subconscious mind goes through so much trouble to tell us to wake up and go to the bathroom.
DeleteLike so many others, I have that bathroom dream, too. Always a bathroom with a line or no clean stall. Ick. So far I wake up, but who knows? Ha!
ReplyDeleteI haven't lost my hubby yet (thank goddess), but I have had vivid dreams of my dead sister and remember waking up crying hard once when I realized in my dream that she was gone. Not sure what happens to us after we die, but we've had some weird happenings in our family that lead me to agree with your description of the spirit/energy hanging around for a while.
Way too many creditable people reporting the weird things happening in the days after someone dies not to believe it's real.
DeleteI've been dreaming more (or maybe the same amount but now at least I remember some of them). Hooray for getting the puzzle table in the right place. We also have one at the clubhouse that is pretty busy. Time to make a little noise to get the community table back???
ReplyDeleteYou may be sleeping lighter causing you to remember more of you dreams.
DeleteWe've made all kinds of noise about the community table and it's not coming back with the food service we have not. Other than that they've improved the food services here, so we're giving them time before revisiting the issue as they've promise we can do.
My dreams are never as interesting as the one you describe. I am in awe. I wonder why anyone would hate on puzzles so much? It's not like that woman has to finish one to get paid. There's always someone who'll yuck on everyone else's yum, isn't there?
ReplyDeleteIn her case, I think she saw a puzzle in a lobby of a building where she is in charge of selling apartments as a contrast to the way she markets the place and puzzles, to her, are for nursing homes and assisted living facilities. We're supposed to be the young 55+ community of active seniors who just want to enjoy life without having the burden of a house and yard to care for. She does monthly lunches and tours for people looking to buy here and at our sister campus, mostly now she's building a wait list.
DeleteDreams are Weird and I try not to Interpret them, but sometimes I can't help it, becoz I do believe on some subconscious level they're telling. Afterlife... it is one of the great Mysteries but I believe it exists becoz Energy never Dies, it just changes Form... so our Energy is Eternal. What Form it takes, couldn't say, except my very fertile Imagination suspects it will be very different than our earthly realm and mebbe limitless. The connection... or re-connection I Hope to have with the Beloved who've entered, I don't expect to have identically from what I had with them here. I hope the Evolution of our Energy is on a higher plane that is even better than what we had here. Your Love for Don is as Eternally in your Heart, clearly, as Death couldn't separate it. It may be no comfort, but I suspect that Connection in Life and/or Death will be all BOTH of you Need on this side and beyond Jean. As for the Puzzle Hater, if she's in charge of Marketing, her Vision for the Strategy of Selling may be to Appeal in a way that's Trendy and sets the Community apart. In actuality, at certain Seasons of Life, she may not be able to 'Connect' to what Residents actually living there have preferences for upon arrival. Marketing it as some extended Trendy Vacation Resort might SOUND enticing, but when someone makes it a Forever Home, you rarely want to spend that balance of Time on an Endless Vacay, you want it to be an actual HOME and Community that Bonds in some meaningful way long-term. If the Puzzle Table brings that Community together, it's why it's so Popular, becoz anyone could be doing Puzzles in their Unit if it was just about doing Puzzles.
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it on the Puzzle issue and I love what you wrote about Energy never dies. Tests have proven at the time of death our bodies weigh less than in the moments before and some want to believe that's the soul leaving the body. Could be the soul and eternal energy are one and the same and are out there ready to connect with other energy "bundles''. To this day I think that the my mom's soul ended up in your great-grand daughter. Her granddaughter (my oldest niece) got pregnant in the same time frame as my mom's death.
DeleteYes, I can see that the puzzle table would be a great meeting place and an easy way to interact with neighbors you don't know.
ReplyDeleteNo such thing as not knowing our neighbors here. We might know some better than others but with only 52 apartments it's easy know who lives where.
Delete