Comfort From Dreams

[kingskid]

As a young person growing up, I frequently had a recurring dream. The dream always happened after I had a particularly stressful day. I might have been in trouble with one of my parents and I would go to bed feeling like "nobody loved me".

In my dream, I was about three years old and I was standing in the center of my grandmother's living room. The perimeter of my visual field was black and all I could see were hands reaching for me, coaxing this child to come to them. They were familiar voices of my family and I was in the circle trying to decide who to go to. Suddenly all the hands would disappear and only one set of hands remained. A voice spoke my name and bid me to come and I ran immediately to the hands. The setting in my dream would immediately switch to a man in a cowboy hat standing by a moving van.

At my uncle's funeral, many years later, I saw a photograph of a man standing by a moving van wearing a cowboy hat. The exact man and van that was in my dream. When I asked my aunt about the picture she told me it was my uncle who had just died. My uncle always told everyone I was his favorite. He spent time with me, bought me special gifts and always told me how special I was.

Do you have any particular dreams that have brought you comfort?

[heart4peace]

I think the most comforting dreams for me are those of reliving special family memories about my Dad while he was still alive. We lost him almost 6 years ago now, after his rapid decline and losing battle with lymphoma. We were a very close family and made years of wonderful memories together - going to church, camping, youth group activities, having friends over for frequent dinners and parties, family celebrations, holidays ... he is sorely missed but whenever I dream about him, it seems so real - I wake up wondering where he is! He was especially known for his big 'bear hugs' and there are times I feel as if I have been hugged ...

[thalia_m]

I had something like that happen to me, but now I'm not sure if it was a dream or it was the spirit of my grandfather.

My parents lived with my mother's parents as they were saving to buy a house. I was the first granddaughter in the family and I was my grandfather's heart. I followed him like a shadow whenever he was home. He took me with him everywhere he went.

On the night he passed, he had tucked me in my bed, as he always did, and then would go back to his bedroom. I slept in the living room and could see the bedroom from where I was. I watched him walk to his side of the bed and then the wall blocked the view from there.

It seemed like a few minutes later when I saw him come walking from his bed and into the living room to me. He sat on the side of the bed, made sure the blankets were still tucked in and never saying a word, left to go back to the bed room. Within seconds of him walking past the wall that blocked my view, my grandmother came racing in to the living room and went to the bottom of the stairs to call for my mother.

She came running down the stairs and ran to the bed room. The story from there was that as soon as my mother reached for my grandfather, he was dead. He had a heart attach. As I had heard the story from my grandmother she had said that he had come to bed after he had tucked me in and put in his earphones to listen to the ball game on his transistor radio. He never left the bed from that point.

I know it was my grandfather's way of letting me know that he was fine and that I would always be watched over by him, but like I said, now I'm not sure that it was a dream or not.

thalia_m