Tears on My Pillow

I’m a Registered Polysomnographic Technologist. Those are some fancy words for “Sleep Tech”. I watch people sleep. I test them for sleep apnea, and treat them with PAP therapy when needed. People ask me all kinds of questions about sleep. I know a lot about sleep. People also ask me a lot about dreams. I don’t know a whole lot about dreams. Dreams are an illusive topic.

Do an internet search on dreams and you will find hundreds of webpages or articles with thoughts, theories, and general guesses about what dreams are and why we have them. Many people have different ideas about them. Ask a doctor about dreams and they will tell you something very different from what a therapist or psychologist will tell you.

This blog isn’t searching for why I had this dream. This blog isn’t expecting someone’s interpretation of this dream. This blog has one purpose – to write this down so I will remember it. After all, they say that you forget 90% of your dreams. I wanted to write this one down, so I’d remember it. So I might be able to come back to it and ponder it at some later date. I have waited too long to write this, as some of the details are already fading.

The Dream

“It’s not fair! It’s just not fair!”

I say this as I am looking at my mother, while holding my newborn daughter. There is no rhyme or reason for her to be there. She has been dead for 13 years, I am aware of this, yet there she is. She is alive in this dream, yet I know she had died already and is dying yet again. I am crying as I speak these words.

I am not sure if I am in a park or some public place. My dad is there, too. There are people around me. A crowd, perhaps. Is this a fair? I don’t know.

There is a stroller. Without knowledge of handing her to him, my dad now has his granddaughter and is walking with her in the stroller.

I cannot recall any conversation between my mother and me, but I am aware she is there. This is different from other dreams with her, where she usually speaks to me.

There are occasional interruptions by people I may or may not know. I do not really hear what they are saying, as my mind is still trying to comprehend how my mother is here, and why she is dying again. Cancer has already taken her once. How can she be back and how can it take her again?

I am aware of my dad returning with the baby in the stroller. He looks at my mother and asks if she wants to push the stroller for a bit. I am suddenly aware that I am standing next to a car. The driver’s side door is open and I am standing between the door and the inside of the car (almost like I am going to get into it). Am I in a parking lot?

I am aware that my daughter is now back in my arms and my mother seems further away. She is not looking directly at me, or anywhere in particular. I am overcome with emotion again as I lay my right arm on the roof of the white car and lay my head on my arm. I again begin to sob. I can feel the tears falling and I keep repeating, “It’s not fair! It’s just not fair!”

I woke up today with tears in my eyes. My pillow was wet from those tears.

What does it mean? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. This dream was just … different. There may be some sort of meaning to it. Maybe it was just my mind sorting through a variety of thoughts. Maybe it means absolutely nothing. It left me contemplating and thinking – enough that I felt I needed to write it down someplace, and that someplace was here.

Maybe one day, I will make sense of it. For now, I will just leave it here.