Yesterday I came home from New York City, where I spent the weekend with my sister's family, including her brand new son born in November. The one who was supposed to be three weeks younger than Weston. They were supposed to grow up together.
Last week, a few days before I left, I suddenly realized that my sister has a baby boy, and I was going to see him in the flesh. So I started getting pretty anxious about the trip.
In my last post I mentioned that I hadn't been thinking much about Weston lately. I am not handling my sadness very well these days, so sometimes I just put him out of my mind. This is never a healthy strategy, and it inevitably ends, usually involuntarily, after a few days. Last week it ended Wednesday, the day before I left for New York.
Wednesday dawned gloomy and rainy. It was identical to the weather on the day Weston died, except it was 50 degrees cooler. And just like July 28, 2012, the sun appeared briefly later in the day, and there were several rainbows spotted around the Valley. When Weston died, the rainbow had the courtesy to appear in our backyard, and I haven't seen one since. Many others have, however, and have sent me pictures, for which I am ALWAYS grateful. Wednesday was no exception: Facebook and the local news showed me a few rainbows. I do not think it's a coincidence that I myself have not seen a single rainbow since Weston died. I believe that particular rainbow was Weston letting me know he was safe on the single worst day of my life. Hope is hard to come by since then, so I guess I don't have the capacity to see rainbows right now.
(It also snowed in Scottsdale. In other words, hell froze over. But the days all run together, so I don't remember if that happened last Wednesday or before.)
Anyway, the above is the context of the news I received. During a particularly dark and rainy moment outside, I checked my email and discovered that a friend recently dreamed about Weston and me. He was a normal-sized baby in the dream, and I was holding him. I cried for a few reasons, one being the unfairness of only being able to hold my baby in someone else's dream. But, more than anything else, my mental picture of this dream was quite comforting. I believe it was God's way of letting me know that Weston is safe and that he knows I love him. As a mother, I have no greater desires for my children than these. Hearing about the dream was a different type of rainbow.
I've mentioned before that I have only dreamed about Weston once, before he was born. I have since learned that parents rarely, if ever, dream of their dead children. This was devastating news: the unfairness continues.
I believe (and others agree) that, because our children are part of us, they are too close to us to dream about. This brought me little comfort for a while. (To be completely transparent, I didn't come up with this belief myself. At the time, I did not have the mental and emotional clarity to make such a conclusion. After ruminating on it for months, though, I have to agree.)
Upon thinking through it further, though, I realized that I never dream about myself either. Sure, I'm a participant in my dreams, but I have never observed myself in a dream. And, I have also had exactly one dream about Caroline. I dreamed about her birth before she was born. When she was actually born, she looked exactly as she had in the dream.
So, the content (or lack thereof) of my dreams is consistent with the theory that I won't dream of Weston. Although the overwhelming majority of, well, everything is sad beyond description now, there is some bittersweet in there too. The reason for Weston's absence from my dreams is one of the bittersweet nuggets of life as the parent of a dead child.
So I took this bittersweet comfort to New York with me. And the weekend was wonderful. It was very difficult, but it ended up being better than I had expected in some ways. In talking to my mom today, I figured out it was because of Jude, my older nephew, who is almost three. Simply put, he is the best. (So is his baby brother, but you know what I mean.) He was excited that I was there, and he is so much fun that I couldn't help but smile, laugh, and genuinely enjoy myself around him.
We all had a lot of quality time together, I cuddled the baby, and I got to experience some things in New York I hadn't done before. And I even got to sneak away one morning and go running in Central Park. I've always wanted to do it, so I braved the rain, 38 degrees, long subway ride, and tender knee and headed over there. And it was completely worth it.
Although it was a good trip, I'm glad to be home. I will always feel closest to Weston here, and I got QUITE the homecoming that made me smile for hours from a certain three-year-old girl. Not to mention a great dinner on the grill, courtesy of Shannon.
Weston's presence in my life, in my heart, is just as real as Caroline's. They will both always be a part of me. Sweet dreams, indeed.
Beautiful. Thank you.
ReplyDelete