The Bed I Make, the Dreams I Keep

There are seasons in life when the smallest habits — a made bed, a cup of coffee, a quiet morning — reveal bigger truths we didn’t know we were ready to face. Lately, Jean’s early‑morning routines have been bumping up against the deeper, older parts of her heart, the ones that still remember what it meant to belong to someone. And sometimes all it takes is a dream to remind her that grief has its own timetable… AI

It’s 7:30 AM. I’m sitting here with a cup of steaming-hot coffee, a load of clothes in the washer, and my bed is made. Who is this morning person I’m turning into? I’m on a 120‑day streak since I started using my Bi‑Pap machine — not only getting up like I’ve got a job to go to, but also making my bed. Before, there were many (if not most) times when my bed wouldn’t get made between laundry days. I’ve fallen into a routine that is both boring and pridefully pleasing at the same time.

Have you ever heard the commencement speech by retired Admiral William H. McRaven about changing the world by starting each day with your made bed? The core lessons in the speech, according to AI, are:

• First task: Making your bed means you finish the first task of your day right away.

• Small pride: This tiny win gives you a small sense of pride.

• Daily momentum: It pushes you to do one more task, then another, and another.

• Little things: It shows that the small things in life matter.

• Comfort at night: If you have a bad day, you return home to a bed you made, which gives you hope for tomorrow.

I first heard that speech back in 2014 when it went viral after he delivered it at the University of Texas. Although I didn’t implement the advice back then, I never forgot it. As someone in the YouTube comment section wrote: “Why don’t we have men like him running for president?” He really is an inspirational speaker.

Before it slips away, I need to write about the dream that woke me up at 7:00 this morning with tears in my eyes — because dreams like this are coming at me way too often to ignore whatever message is trying to surface.

In the dream, I had let myself into the cracker‑box of a house my husband lived in before we were married. I was gathering up his laundry to take home and wash when he came in with a pleasant young woman and her 10‑ or 12‑year‑old son. Don didn’t anything, but she was a regular chatterbox, telling me how happy she was to meet me and how I didn’t need to take his laundry anymore — she could do it. In the dream I was thinking, Oh my God, he’s moved on!

And that’s when I woke up, but I didn’t get up right away. I laid there thinking...until I had to pee, if you must know.

Don died fourteen years ago, and yet apparently I’m still emotionally attached. At least I’m not teary‑eyed at the lunch or dinner table the way a couple of my fellow residents are when the subject of dead spouses comes up. But maybe I should be, because I still seem to have unfinished business in the mourning department. He was My Person, as the young people say, the best friend I’ve ever had. And just once I’d like to dream about him where he’s happy to see me again. But no — in my dreams he’s always just out of reach, vaguely there, walking away, or I’m searching for him.

Back before the turn of the century I kept a dream diary because didn’t everyone back then dive into dream analysis? I quit when my dad was in the early stages of dementia and couldn’t tell the difference between his nighttime dreams and reality. That scared me, because my dreams were pretty wild back then — filled with colorful or arty‑farty escapades. If you’ve seen the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come, you’ll get the picture. I spent several years learning how to transfer my night dreams to my conscious mind that now I can’t not do it.

So this morning I visited an online dictionary of dream symbolism and looked up “laundry.” It said: “Cleaning your clothes in your dream symbolizes your image in your life. You are trying to portray yourself in a different light where you feel more accepted. If you are organizing your laundry, this represents what you are trying to do with your thoughts and characteristics in your life.”

That explanation makes sense, but it also begs the question: does it matter that the laundry wasn’t mine, but his? That it was dirty laundry, not clean?

Another part of the dictionary says it’s extremely common to dream about someone we miss because we often have trouble expressing those same feelings in our waking life. That’s me. Stiff upper lip. I can do anything if I set my mind to it. After all, I got through 12½ years of caregiving a severely disabled husband and rebuilding our lives into something that gave him the best quality of life under the circumstances.

But the past is past. Or is it?

And maybe that’s what the dream was trying to tell me — not that I’m “done” with grief, or that I’ve reached some tidy stage of acceptance, but that I’m allowed to live the life I have now without feeling guilty that it’s easier and in a place that is both beautiful and safe. I know plenty of seniors who don’t get this kind of comfort or stability, and that knowledge sits heavy sometimes, like I’m benefiting from a trade I never wanted to make.

Maybe the real work isn’t saying goodbye to My Person — maybe it’s learning how to carry him forward while still letting myself enjoy the small, daily pleasures without feeling guilt. I may never get there. But the dreams keep pushing me as if to say, it’s okay to keep trying. ©