It might be time I did some intentional grieving... because this morning I woke up to a bad, bad dream.
Sorry to bore you with the details, but in my dream I had surrendered Joel to the care of Child and Family Services. They had offered that if caring for Joel was "too much" for me, I could do this, no questions asked. And so I had done so. (look, it was a dream. In a dream we all do stuff that we never even would consider in real life) Now it was a month later, a month since I had seen Joel. "Oh my goodness!" I said. "Maybe Joel has died and they didn't even tell me. Maybe he is sick and I don't know. Maybe I should see if they will let me visit him."
And then in my dream, grief and longing for my son burst full upon me (along with guilt and regret) and I woke myself up with my own tears. And that deep, deep pain in my heart. It was one of those crazy dreams that seems so real that even though I woke up and knew Joel had died, I still had to take a few more seconds to tell myself, "no, no, you never let him go, he DIDN'T die without you there."
It's hard to really explain the awfulness of a dream like this. Some of you will understand. Some of you also are good with imagination, you can empathize by thinking of yourself there.
I don't know. Was it my feelings inside, letting me know that they need to come out, that if I don't deal with the grief, I will feel like I'm somehow in a sense "giving Joel away" because it is too hard to be sad...?? No, I don't hold that dreams have some special meaning, my Id speaking to my Ego, or anything spiritual or whatever. But sometimes the FEELINGS that come out of them can be telling. Sometimes those feelings coming out in our sleep are a good barometer for us to pay attention to, maybe?
So, I am realizing from the deep feelings I woke up with, that I need to be careful to keep being "intentional" in grieving Joel especially in the holiday season. It is easy to "get busy," to ignore sad things, to be distracted. But I still miss my son so much. I still long for him so greatly. And I need to acknowledge that, because the love for him is always there. And if I shove the pain aside because I am too busy to deal with it, then deep inside it feels like I'm "giving him up," in a sense, because it's too hard/inconvenient/painful to deal with the loss of him... But all the love for him is still there inside me.
This might be hard for you who have not lost someone really close, particularly a child, to understand. I know lots of people who think it is "healthy" to "let go" of the person, to allow yourself to be distracted and try to focus on other things. Good for you, if you lose someone and find this works. Personally I can not. I just find that I have to feel the pain and sadness. I can't deny the truth. I miss my son. I miss him so very much. That's all I can say.
