It is no surprise that my mother's rapid decline would prompt some unusual dreams and that has, indeed, been the case. Last weekend, as I was clearing out her apartment, I cranked out the following dream:
"I am climbing up a dark steep staircase from the basement. A girl (early teens) is going to break in a window, which is to my right. The window is a half window partially below ground and blocked part way by a shutter.I am terrified beyond belief. I scream and scream but no sound comes out of my mouth.I get to the top of the stairs, enter a kitchen where I find my husband loading a gun to get the girl. He has a 9mm handgun but the bullets he's trying to load are too small-more like 22 caliber.His hands are shaking so badly that he's dropping bullets. I know he won't be able to help me."
The dream is very complex and taps into multiple levels. When I encounter breaking into one's house in a dream, it is often a surgery theme, the house being symbolic of the body. Being unable to cry out for help is related to anesthesia. The girl outside is for some reason very scary. I, at first, identify her as mother, but upon later reflection, I realize she is my teenage self. Training analyst says this is an old dream which began in my teens. Outside I am a teenage girl soon to become a woman, wife and mother. Inside, however, I am terrified little girl who is silently screaming for someone to help her.
Sometimes the unconscious will do a reversal. So males are females. Big is little. Old is young. In that vein, I wondered if the menacing young girl was really old man death.The Blind Boys of Alabama singing "Hush" comes to mind. And instead of my husband, the person I go to for help is my mother. The shaking hands is the tip off here. The first association to people with shaky hands would be her and secondly to my father who would shake when he got agitated. And it is my realization now that my mother who used to protect me is no longer able to help me. She might want to, but her hands shake and the bullets are too tiny, that is, not powerful enough, to do the job. Once, if I were frightened, I could run to her to feel safe. That sense of security is gone. Now, I comfort her and I'm the one who has to keep her safe.
1 comment:
A number of my friends on LJ have been sharing odd, disturbing, or vivid dreams recently. Is it Halloween/Samhain? Is it the change of seasons? Is it losing Daylight Savings? I suspect it's a bit of the above. I have been sleeping poorly since the end of DST. Research with babies suggests that infants who spend time in the sunshine during the afternoon are more likely to sleep through the night. So perhaps the solution is a sun break at 3:30!
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