Room for Grief

Last night I dreamed about grief. I only remember a sliver of the dream now. My mother wasn't there, and it wasn't about her sickness, or her death. It was about the grief itself. In this dream, I walked into a bedroom that felt like my childhood room, but for some reason there were two beds instead of one. Early evening light shone on the handmade quilts in golden geometric shapes. It seemed to be around 5:00 or 6:00 and felt more like a summer evening than winter, and the rest of the world had gone inside for dinner. The silence outside my window was almost palpable. Nobody was in this house with me. The sense of loneliness weighed me down like bags of sand--sand that I felt in my throat and between my ribs. I walked to one of the beds and sat on the edge. I smoothed one hand over the green quilt. "I miss you," I whispered, and my chest tightened like I was about to sob, but I could not cry. My body shook, I grasped the quilt into tight fists, I squeezed my eyes shut, but still, I could not cry. Music began to play downstairs, the only sound in the dream, but I knew I was still alone here. I recognized the song as Silent Night, but it was specifically the version that played on a string of icicle lights that we put on our Christmas tree every year when I was a child. I had wondered how long I left the tree lights on, but I stayed still on the edge of the bed. When I woke, I couldn't remember any other details of the dream--only that room.

I have never studied the psychology of dreams, and despite a wild curiosity, I really do not know anything about them or their meanings. I suspect my dream was prompted by a combination of things. I listened to Christmas music earlier this weekend while doing some cleaning in my apartment, I've been thinking about my mother nonstop over the past few weeks, several of my dear friends are grieving this holiday season, and I also read a short blurb right before bed about missing a loved one who had passed away. The result of this concoction was a trippy dream that may seem simple and silly, but had me feeling nauseated when I woke.

I could cut open my dream this morning, dissect every fiber of it, try to understand all of its parts and what they mean. But in the cold, blue light of an early December morning, I clung to one major truth: I just miss her. And the missing, especially around the holidays, can feel like the room in that dream--quiet, lonely, and extremely heavy. I have a friend who lost her mother last year around this time, and another friend who lost her mother just days ago. Their grief is raw. Tender. An open wound that feels as though it won't heal. If they each have a room of grief, it would look entirely different than mine. There are likely no green quilts or singing icicle Christmas lights. Perhaps there is noise. Perhaps there are other people. Maybe no detail is even remotely similar.

My room of grief looked different four years ago. It didn't have windows. The walls were black and ash was everywhere. My family was present, but nobody could talk, and everything tasted like dust. These rooms in my mind are more than just dreams. They are a metaphor for my stages of grief, and they are unique to me. It's important to realize that grief never really goes away. But it changes. We can eventually paint over the walls if they're too dark. We can rearrange the furniture depending on where we are in our lives. We can let more light in.

Over the past few years I have connected with several friends who have lost a parent. My human instinct is to relate to their pain and show them they are not alone. I search my mind for advice or the right thing to say. But the truth is, there is no right thing to say, and my pain is not the same as their pain. They may be going through something that looks comparable on the surface, but their journey is their own. Our rooms of grief are different. I saw this even with my own siblings. There are five of us, and we all lost the same person. We leaned on each other as we struggled with our mother's death, but we processed, coped with, and grieved the loss differently.

There are two days until Christmas, and even as I approach the six-year anniversary of my mother's death, my subconscious mind still plays her Christmas music, on her tree, in her house. As I offer support to friends who are in the earlier stages of their grief, I remind myself that I cannot fully relate. What I can do is love them, and give them as much hope, courage, and patience as possible, because when we do grieve, that is what we need the most, no matter what it looks like on the inside.