Mark tells me I mumble and cry out in my sleep a lot. Probably once a week, I wake up and can remember the dreams. This has been going on for almost 2 years now. The dreams are no worse than our reality - Jim's there, then he's not. In my dreams, sometimes we're little kids again, sometimes we're teenagers, sometimes it's the years right before he died. But the ending of the dreams is always the same, I lose him somehow.
We went to Disney World when Sean was 5. As we were all outside waiting for the taxi, Kristen had to go to the bathroom and she went back inside the hotel. What four adults didn't see was Sean followed her. But he was far enough behind her that he lost her in the lobby, got confused and walked down a long corridor with shops. Kirsten came back, but no Sean. I was 100% terrified. I'd lost him. For 15 long minutes, 4 adults and Kirsten searched for him. Finally, he arrived back at the hotel with tears in his eyes, holding the hand of a Disney employee.
That panicked terror I felt when I lost Sean is the terror I feel in my dreams. But it doesn't go away, I wake up and Jim is still lost. There's no Disney employee holding his hand, leading him back to me. No waking from the dream to find a less grim reality.
I've kept this mostly to myself. Every once in a while, if the dream is bad enough, Mark will ask about it. He'll ask if it was about Jim, and when I say "Yes," that's all the explanation he needs. But this morning, Kirsten admitted to the same dream. She was sitting with Uncle Jim and Aunt Kate, eating and talking around Mimi and Papa's kitchen table. All of a sudden Aunt Kate gave her the strangest look. She said in her dream she thought she had food on her face, but when she turned back to Uncle Jim, he was gone and she knew what Aunt Kate's face meant. She woke up crying.
September 17th marks the one-year anniversary of Jim's death. I don't see the dreams stopping for any of us in the near future.
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