Reality of a Dream

Five o’clock in the morning… I find myself awaken by the brutal sound of the alarm clock. The sweetness that filled my heart just seconds ago is fading away as, once again, I find myself looking around for you only to find a vast emptiness in my arms. I wake up to the reality while you stay there… I thank you for the beautiful dream and move on with my day with a bitter-sweet feeling in my heart. I long to hold your hand again but then I remember it is now your turn to hold my hand…

Dreams… for some, they can be just random creations of our mind: many unrelated images and stories with no real meaning or significance. For me, dreams have become a bridge between the reality and our existence here, on Earth, and our home, the home we left when we were born. But, most of all, I see dreams as a God’s way of communicating with and guiding us.

I think that everyone who has lost someone really dear to their heart will have dreams involving that person. Some people may have constant dreams involving their lost loved ones; others may only have one or two along the way. However, those dreams are the kind of dreams one remembers forever. When I speak of those dreams, I don’t mean the regular, blurry, meaningless kinds of dreams we sometimes experience, but rather the dreams that, upon awakening, leave us partially within the state of the dream. I am talking about the very real and powerful dreams through which we are able to feel the presence of the loved one so strongly that we could swear they were really there with us.

Unfortunately, I spent most of my life believing that dreams were just random, with no real meaning. It is not like I could remember most of them anyway. Unlike my mom who was a real “Dream Lady.” Whenever someone passed away, or something significant were about to happen, my mom would have a dream about it. Still, I always laughed about it and never really payed much attention to it. Maybe I should have…

I will never forget a dream involving my husband I had about a year prior to that night. In that dream he looked so incredibly evil while coming towards me in an attempt to hurt me. I was making a cross sign with my fingers in order to protect myself from him but the cross I was making kept bending as he was getting closer. Someone might consider the message obvious… The irony here was that, at that time, even though my husband had already begun to show some instability, was having issues at work and with our neighbors, and had started to abuse me emotionally, I had not realized that our relationship might be at all abnormal… I guess that through this dream, God was trying to warn me and I just did not comprehend His message…

A couple weeks prior to that night, my mom also had an ominous dream in which she saw two graves in our backyard. Unfortunately, my mom had no idea what was happening in our house. At some point, I did confide in her that things in our house were just not the way they used to be, however she had no idea to what extent things had changed. I guess that, once again, God was trying to warn me but since I did not believe in “those things,” I just ignored what my mom said and moved on.

After that night, I had many dreams that involved both Sebastian and my late husband. However, for a long time the dreams with my late husband were nothing more but really terrifying and disturbing nightmares. Yet, as the time went on, they became less frightening and, in the last one that I can recall, my late husband was offering me his friendship and support.

On the other hand, the dreams involving Sebastian were very different: they were always very meaningful and sweet and it always seemed like he was trying to tell me something.

In one of the very first dreams I had after the incident, I saw the four of us in one room: Sebastian and Gia were playing just like they used to while my late husband was standing, facing me, trying to explain the reason why he took Sebastian’s life. Once he finished, my attention was drawn to another, smaller room, where a little boy was sitting looking at me with a smile. Two years have passed and I still see this boy so vividly: with his light blond hair and a mischievous smile. He did not resemble nor remind me of Sebastian at all but he just kept staring and smiling. As the dream continued, that little boy walked hand-in-hand with Sebastian through a school while I kept looking at both of them, comparing them.

Another dream I had once may appear silly at first: it began with a huge bunny rabbit hopping through a meadow. All of a sudden, the animal disappeared behind a fence only to stick out his paw towards me. As I touched it, it turned into Sebastian’s hand and I felt an overwhelming sense of love for him. I often wondered what this dream meant until one day I had another dream with Sebastian. That dream took place at a funeral home but I did not feel the discomfort or sadness. Instead, I was just casually putting the pieces of Sebastian’s body together, kind of like a puzzle. When I was finally done, Sebastian came alive and, again, I felt this incredible sense of love from him as he said, “mama, the bunny rabbit meant a new beginning…”

Even though there are still some chapters of my life that need to be closed before I move on, I hope that the new beginning Sebastian was talking about is not too far away. I also hope that one day I will hold in my arms that little boy with a mischievous smile I saw in the dream and the emptiness in my heart will be filled with laughter of a little boy once again…