Lately I've been having a lot of dreams about the dead, and I have to wonder what that says about me, what it says about my state of mind, if indeed it says anything.

I've looked for answers with Google, because, of course, you can believe everything that you find on the internet.

I found a website that belches forth a message about Global Oneness in it's banner, and boasts that it is "co-creating a happy world." As you might imagine, I was damn near overcome with special feelings of warm fuzziness.

The merry band at Global Oneness offer quite a bit of information about dreams of the dead, including:

To dream of seeing the dead, living and happy, signifies you are letting wrong influences into your life, which will bring material loss if not corrected by the assumption of your own will force.

That caught my attention because the dreams I've been having are all just that; dreams of seeing dead friends and relatives alive again, happy and peaceful, not the least bit concerned about the fact that they were dead a while ago.

But I'm not at all sure how to achieve the assumption of my own will force. I can only assume that it involves a light saber. I don't have one. I do have a rake, but you seldom see brave Jedi warriors going forth into battle armed with gardening tools. So I'll have to leave the assumption of my will force for another time.

These dreams are mainly about four different people; my grandmother and grandfather, an uncle who was like a father to me, and a friend who died almost a year ago. In the dreams I'm typically amazed to see them alive and well again in familliar settings, and I usually have the sense that this is a temporary arrangement, but I can never find the words to express everything I want to say to them before they're once again lost to the warm indifference of the void. My dead loved ones are usually happy in the dreams, but I'm usually in a bit of a panic.

At a website called AnswerBag, someone asked the following question, and given that it was posted in all caps I'll assume that there was an urgency about it:

EXACTALLY WHAT DOES IT MEAN WHEN I DREAM OF DECEASED PEOPLE THAT I KNEW WHEN THEY WERE ALIVE BUT THEY DONT AKNOWLEDGE ME IN MY DREAMS? DOES THAT MEAN I'M GOING TO DIE?

A number of people have offered answers, including a few amateur theologists. This one is my favorite:

remember when you pass away, you are in doormat untill jesus returns to earth again.

Emphasis, I suppose, on the word amateur more than theologist.

You know, I just can't imagine my late grandmother waiting for her Savior's return while hanging out inside of a friggin' doormat. A pair of curtains, OK. A toilet-paper cozy? For sure. But not a doormat.

I continued clicking links and found something from a 2007 New York Times piece that caught my attention:

“Back to life” or “visitation” dreams, as they are known among dream specialists and psychologists ... are a particularly potent form of what Carl Jung called “big dreams...”

Later, the article mentioned the research of one Dr. Dierdre Barrett, assistant professor of psychology, Harvard Medical School:

The most common (of these kinds of dreams) was "back to life" dreams, which made up 39 percent of the dreams of the dead in Dr. Barrett’s sample. In such dreams, subjects were surprised or frightened by the appearance of a deceased loved one. Dr. Barrett theorized that these early dreams corresponded to the confusion and denial of early stages of grief.

That seemed somewhat authentic to me. Especially with regard to the death of my friend last year. His passing was sudden and shocking, and since he was a co-worker I have opportunities to think about him almost daily. Maybe I'm still trying to accept that he's gone. Maybe his death has stirred lingering grief for lost family.

I was comforted some by this quote from Roger Knudson, director of the Ph.D. program in clinical psychology at Miami University of Ohio:

"I don’t want to get over my father. That’s not to say that I want to suffer on a daily basis or that I don’t want to understand that he is dead. But I look forward to dreams in which my father will come again. What does it mean to ‘get over’ it? I think that is crazy."

Emphasis mine.

I like that. And I'm gonna leave it at that.

Hey, it beats a friggin' doormat.

Labels: Humor, Personal