The Power of Dreams

So spring if here - birds, leaves, blossom and apart from the cold wind, you'd believe that winter was a distant memory. The sun is finally getting some real power behind it and when I wake at six, the sky is brighter every day, and it lingers longer every night. It's a time for getting used to the changes that are hurtling along at a heck of a clip now. There's one change that I though would take much longer than other going on - and that's the loss of my sister in law.

P was a true environmental warrior. She lived off grid for some years and was involved with the Henry Doubleday Institute. She and her husband cooked everything from scratch, ate mostly plant based food and grew a good proportion of their food themselves. They dumped plastic years before it became trendy and were truly authentic people, interested and opinionated and involved. I love them both dearly. We stayed at their home on the coast in Devon some years ago and to be in their space with their way of living was an inspiration. All the shelving was hand made by them, they had no tv, just books and an ancient cassette player - I was in my element!

P died last week after a short battle with pancreatic cancer and a longer battle with breast cancer. Last night I dreamed of her. I rarely dream, or if I do, I don't remember them except on very specific occasions, all of which I still remember now, vivid and detailed. Last night I dreamed I was in a place of learning - a university or a summer school or something. We were learning together - my husband, P and T and I. When the learning was over (it seemed like we had been there for some weeks or months) she came to find me. She hugged me and said goodbye and said that she wouldn't be around for a while. We were standing on a track in an open, flat countryside area beside some barns surrounded by fields and woods, and there was a stream running beside us. It was cold but the sun was shining. She had a patterned cotton blouse on that I didn't recognise and she looked much younger than she was, but I knew it was her.

When I woke from the dream I felt sad but calm. I wished I could have gone back to sleep and dreamed it all over again and made every irrational moment in it stick in my mind. I know that it was my brain making sense of something that is troubling me, something that has been on my mind and painful, but what an amazing experience it was. So much of it resonated with me - the classroom, the learning for the love of learning even though I have no idea what we were studying, the cold and the sun, the flat landscape and the trees and the water, her shirt, the scent of her, her presence, her manner and her speech patterns even though she looked somewhat different to how I knew her. And the implication was that our parting was temporary - she said something about catching up with me later.

Even now, thinking of it has me deeply satisfied, though I will miss her. It might not be a mystical experience, but it has me thinking about what her life has taught me, how she lived and her politics and her beliefs. Why a farm though, I don't know. The water is the journey and the trees are my favourite symbols of stability and nature and health.

This is one that I will remember for years to come and however it came to me, I am grateful for the acceptance and calm it has brought me.