About the Dreams

I don't know if everyone dreams about their dead the way I do, but when Robert shows up, it's still intensely emotional. Even now, more than two decades later, I wake up with my heart pounding and that specific ache that belongs only to grief. The dreams have changed over the years, though. They've shifted in ways I didn't expect, and I think that shift might mean something.

In the first few years after Robert died, I dreamed of him constantly. The dreams all had the same theme: he was back, but we both somehow knew he wasn't supposed to be there. He was distant in these dreams. He wouldn't speak to me or look at me. He'd only interact with our daughter Emmy, and I'd watch from the edges, panicked and frantic because I'd given away his clothes and now he needed them; I’d moved; I’d received death benefits I’d have to give back. When I tried to talk to him directly, asking desperate questions like "Where did you go?" or "How did you find your way back?" he couldn't explain anything. He wouldn't answer me at all.

The silence was the worst part – it felt dismissive.

I had similar dreams after my dad died, though not as many and not quite as upsetting. In those, he was back with the whole family, and when I mentioned that he'd returned, he'd laugh. Like, "Duh! I'm supposed to be here!" But the Robert dreams were different. They were frantic and unfinished, and I'd wake up exhausted.

I've always had vivid dreams based on whatever's churning in my brain – fears, anxieties, things I can't quite name. I usually tell them to my Mom who almost always interprets them for me spot-on. I'm not sure why I don't dream happier, but that's how my mind works. It processes at night what I won't let myself touch during the day.

As the years went on, I dreamed of Robert less and less. And then, maybe seven or eight years ago, the dreams changed completely. Now, when he shows up, he's far off, talking to someone I know, looking toward me and laughing with whoever he's standing next to. In the last one - maybe a year ago now - he was with my sister at the end of a street. They were talking, and he was gesturing toward me, waving. Like they were talking about me. The point of it, the whole feeling of the dream, was that he seemed happy, not confused like before.

I think my brain was finally reconciling some guilt.

Here's what I carried for years: I turned off Robert's life support. My mom was with me when I made that decision, but I was the one who said yes. It was the right call medically, the merciful call, the call that honored what he would have wanted. But mercy doesn't erase the weight of it. I was thirty-six years old, and I unplugged my husband's life.

That's not something you just get over.

And then there were the choices I made after he died. Some of them were survivable mistakes; grief makes you do strange things. But some of them were bigger than that. I made decisions I'm not proud of, decisions that didn't honor Robert's memory or the life we'd built. I was lost, and I acted like it.

And then I married David. He is good and kind and exactly who I needed. Our marriage is happy. Genuinely, deeply happy. But for a long time, I felt guilty about that too. Like being happy with someone else meant I hadn't loved Robert enough or didn’t love him anymore. Like moving forward was a betrayal.

Faith tells me none of that is true. I prayed for someone like David, and I was specific. God did not disappoint. Time has proven that loving David doesn't diminish what I had with Robert. But guilt doesn't operate on logic. It sits in your chest and whispers at night, and sometimes it shows up in your dreams as a husband who won't look at you.

I don't know enough about dream interpretation to say this with certainty, but I think those early dreams were my mind trying to process what I couldn't say out loud. Robert being back but distant, unreachable, unable to answer my questions - that tracks. I had questions I'd never get answers to. I had regrets I couldn't undo. And I had given away his clothes, literally and metaphorically. I'd moved on before I'd made peace with leaving.

The panic in those dreams was real panic. The kind that comes from knowing you've done something irreversible and you can't explain yourself, can't make it right, can't go back.

But the dreams where my dad showed up laughing, like his return was obvious and expected? Those were different. I didn't carry the same guilt with my dad. I hadn't made end-of-life decisions for him. I hadn't scrambled to rebuild my life in ways I later regretted. My dad's death was different. We were all there with him. We knew he was walking into heaven. So he showed up in dreams the way he showed up in life - easy, unbothered, part of the family.

Robert's dreams took longer to settle.

I don't know exactly when the shift happened. It wasn't sudden. But somewhere along the way, I stopped dreaming of him as distant and unreachable. I stopped waking up in a panic. And when he did show up, he was happy. Talking to people I love. Waving at me. At peace.

Maybe that's time doing its work. Grief softens with years, even when it doesn't disappear. The sharp edges dull. The questions you'll never answer stop screaming quite so loud.

But I firmly believe it's also faith. I've had to give the guilt over, piece by piece, year by year. I've had to believe that turning off life support was an act of love, not abandonment. That the mistakes I made after his death don't define me or dishonor him. That loving David doesn't erase Robert. That happiness now doesn't mean I didn't grieve hard enough then.

I've had to accept forgiveness I didn't think I deserved.

And maybe my subconscious finally believed it. Maybe that's why Robert shows up now the way he does - happy, laughing, gesturing toward me like he's telling my sister, "Yeah, that's her. She's okay."

I don't dream of him often anymore. Maybe once a year, if that. But when I do, the panic is gone. The silence is gone. He's just there, at a distance, content. And I wake up sad, because I miss him. But I don't wake up guilty.

That's not nothing.

If you're in the early years and you're dreaming of your person in ways that feel panicked or unfinished or wrong, I don't know if this will help. But I'll tell you what I've learned: the dreams might shift. They might not always feel this heavy. Your mind is working something out, even if you can't see it yet.

And if you're carrying guilt about decisions you made, or about how you're surviving; about being happy again, then listen. That guilt might be loudest in your dreams because you won't let yourself feel it during the day. But it doesn't have to stay that way forever.

Time helps. Faith helps. Forgiveness, even the kind you give yourself, helps.

And one day, maybe, your person shows up in a dream waving at you. Happy. At peace. And you wake up and realize you might be too.

With grace for the mess,

~Stef