Never have I ever had a more upsetting dream than the one I had last night. I woke up with tears streaming down my face and proceeded to burst into almost uncontrollable sobbing. After holding my sleeping son’s hand and praying over him for ten minutes, I woke my husband. I was still borderline hysterical and I asked him to just hold me. Eventually, I calmed down but my body physically hurt the way it does in the early stages of deep grief. I had to keep reminding myself that I had only dreamed it all. None of it was real. I was awake for at least an hour, scared that I would sleep and the unfinished dream would return.
My five-year-old had somehow come into contact with a deadly disease or toxin of some kind. While he appeared fine, we were told that, once symptomatic, he would be so contagious that it would spread like wildfire, essentially infecting the entire world. Only my son and one other boy, a ten-year-old, had come into contact with it. The other boy was severely disabled and lived in a vegetative state. The only solution, we were told, was to put the two boys on a rocket and send them into space. They would die of the disease, alone, somewhere above the earth.
It seemed absurd, even in the dream, but we were being given absolutely no say in the matter. Our son was being taken from us and put on a spaceship and we were powerless to stop it. There was a narrow window before he would begin to show signs of his illness and we were allowed to spend one final day with him. The events in this dream were so real and so traumatic that I have to choke back tears if I even think about it.
The dream played out slowly as we went through this one last day with our child. We tried to make it sound exciting. He’d be going into space and then he would meet Jesus. We didn’t want him to be scared. We wanted him to have a few more happy minutes. We took him to a park and just watched him play, knowing it would be the last time we ever saw him running fearless and free. He ran to me and climbed into my lap. I held him close, imagining how silent our house and our lives would be without him. I ran my fingers through his curls and kissed his head. We sat at a picnic table and let him devour an enormous slice of cake. I thought about how he would be in a rocket ship, with no one to talk to except a boy who couldn’t talk back, and eventually he would be ill and no one would be there to take care of him. It would be torture for him and for my heart. I begged God to let the cup pass from me. Every moment, whether smiling for him or crying for our loss, was painful.
The time came. The authorities, dressed in hazmat suits (even though our boy was running and playing and fine) summoned us. “It’s time to put on his shoes,” they said. Why shoes were a priority is beyond me but we somehow knew that this signaled the very end of our time with him. We were sending our son to space to die. We would never, ever see him again. It was the only way, we were told, to save humanity. I held him so tightly in my arms and then…
I woke up. As I came into consciousness, I reached up and felt my face. It was wet with tears. As I told my husband, through sobs, about the dream, he told me that in real life that would never, ever happen. “...because if it did happen, I would go with him,” he said. “I would never make him go alone.”
I have no idea what the dream meant. Certainly I see themes and threads but the deep meaning is lost. I know that, as I laid awake, shaken by the feeling of grief even after I knew it had all been a dream, I prayed for friends walking through real life anguish and sorrow, friends grieving real and tangible losses. Today, I pulled my five year old onto my lap, with his chest facing mine. “Hold still,” I said. “If we are both very still, we will be able to feel our hearts talking to each other.” He didn’t move. “Do you feel that?” I asked as the subtle beating of my heart whispered secrets to his.
“Yes,” he said, his heart murmuring back.
I cannot bear the thought of losing him. Walking through it step by step, in my sleep, was torture. Pray for those in the throes of grief. Hug your people. Hold still and let your hearts talk to theirs.
