Dreaming Again

We celebrated our youngest grandchild/only grandson’s 4th birthday this past weekend with a family dinner of his favorite – spaghetti – and a lot of laughing, smiling, talking over giggling children and the TV, and remembering.  We all had a wonderful time together.

The days before our get-together, though, were a little stressful for me.  My husband is always trying to convince me that cleaning the house would be a much better idea after the grandkids leave than before they come, but I cannot bring myself to wait!  It seems disrespectful to not have the house clean and a meal ready to be eaten when everyone arrives.  So I cleaned all day Friday, anticipating needing to do it again Monday after our dinner together on Sunday.

But that wasn’t the stress-inducer.  That came from not knowing what I was to make for our little man for dinner and dessert, and not knowing what time everyone would be coming over until around 5 Saturday afternoon.  I don’t do well with unknowns like that.  I prefer to have all my ducks in a row days before an event like having 14 people (we had a couple of extras) over for dinner.  And when I am stressing a bit about something, I usually dream about it, with Saturday night being no exception.

It was one of those dreams where your consciousness comes into play and you are talking with your dreaming self about your dream…….if you know what I mean.

In my dream, I had baked our grandson, Elijah’s chocolate cake, frosted it and was putting the decorations on it when I began to be aware of what I was doing in my dream.  This awareness came, I believe, because I knew what I was doing wasn’t what I should have been doing, though it was so what I wanted to do.

I was using those hard candy decorative letters to spell out our grandson’s name on his cake, but I was spelling – I.S.R.A.E.L. – the name of our son who is in heaven.  It seemed, in my dream, that I knew something wasn’t right, so I tried again, and again I spelled out – I.S.R.A.E.L.

This is when I really became aware that I was dreaming that I was decorating a cake for the son I desperately miss and have not seen in three and a half years.  Then it seemed like I began chiding myself, telling myself that this wouldn’t work, just like every other desperate bargaining plea to get him to return wouldn’t work.

I spelled out his name a third time, before I removed the letters and found and applied the correct ones: E.L.I.J.A.H.

Then I woke up.

When I awoke, I was happy.  I had gone to that imaginary place in my dreams – that place where no one was missing; no one was broken; all was happy, whole and well in our family again.

Then I remembered.

Then I was “normal”, in that “new normal” sort of way.   (I really hate that term – “new normal”.)

Dreams can be so sweet, but they can be torturous, as well.  This was a sweetly torturous dream that I have a love/hate feeling about; though I think I will cling to the dreaminess of it – that feeling I had before I realized I was spelling out the wrong name – for a while.

This is our family, a few years ago when Izzy was home on leave for his birthday.

And our two oldest sons, Joe and Izzy (on the left), eating Izzy’s birthday cake, hanging out in the driveway in front of Joe’s ’66 Mustang he was (and still is) restoring.