Beautiful Dreamer

A while ago my friend, who also suffered a similar loss, and who also happens to be my massage therapist, was asking me if I listen to podcasts.  I hadn’t really engaged in moving into that part of technology.  I was still trying to figure out twitter and managing my Pinterest account.   She told me about Kat Kerr and her book and podcast, Revealing Heaven.   She is a Christian who has been having visions of heaven for many years.   I am not a fan of her political views, but her descriptions of Heaven are inspiring, amazing and hopeful.

I had gone a while without any signs and I was starting to wonder if I was moving into a new phase without them.  A few weeks ago though, while I was pretty ill in Mexico, I had a dream where I was standing with my two eldest daughters but they were four years younger.   I was trying to get my daughter’s attention to tell her I had worked really hard to get back from the future, and she needed to now listen to me.  They were giggling and being goofy like any 13 and 14-year-old girls tend to be.  No one was really listening to me.   I couldn’t warn her of potential things to avoid if she wouldn’t listen to me, but I tried anyway.  I woke up and I realized my dream hadn’t worked, I couldn’t change the past.

 I have been thinking about the best way to navigate the holidays.    I did a poll online in my support group and everyone going through grief seems to have a different answer.    Some do not celebrate the holidays at all, some people start all new traditions like going skiing or visiting somewhere and cooking their meals in Air B and B kitchen.  Some people keep everything the same for their holidays, the way their loved one would have wanted it.   Some people do a combination of keeping traditions but starting new ones in their loved one’s name, like lighting a special candle, donating in their loved one’s name, buying gift cards from their loved one to the needy.  I knew with two children still at home we needed to keep our same traditions, but I knew for me we needed to start new ones, such as our purple angel tree and the Harry Potter tree, our angel tree at our church to give to a charity, gifts for a child less fortunate from my daughter.  

I went to sleep last night and dreamed I was visiting my daughter.   I was sitting on her bed in what looked like an apartment dorm type set up.  Some place she has never lived before.  There were about five or six girls putting on make-up and chatting.  I asked her was she taking classes there?  Then I asked an even weirder question, who was paying for the classes?  She said don’t worry about it!  Now that I think about it, tuition from heaven would be extremely expensive.

I sent a message describing it to my new friend I met in an online support group who lost her son on the same day.  She told me only weeks before she had a very similar dream where she had visited her son and he was living in a beautiful boys boarding school looking place in Heaven.   I thought that was a crazy coincidence that we were having, she described a very similar place to what I had seen.   I remembered Kat Kerr describing Heaven and by her standards, it could be like that for young adults, and why not?  My friend also told me her son said to her when she asked about seeing God, “He’s everywhere, He doesn’t look like Dumbledore from Harry Potter.”    I love that because that’s exactly what I had pictured.

At the end of my dream, she showed me a room with lots of twinkly lights.  It kind of looked like my oldest daughter’s bedroom, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking at.   I was just thrilled that she was not sad, she was talking and carrying on with her same sarcastic sense of humor.  It gave my soul a little hug to think this is where she is hanging out.

In my daughters closet after she passed, I found an antique copy of the sheet music “Beautiful Dreamer,” It’s a song that I just recently found out was sung to them when both of my oldest girls were very little.  It was also part of the words I wrote on her grave marker, way before I found the sheet music.  

Beautiful dreamer,
Wake unto me
Starlight and dewdrops
Are awaiting thee,

Sounds of the rude world
Heard in the day
Led by the moonlight
Have all passed away.

Beautiful dreamer,
Queen of my song
List’ while I woo thee
With a soft melody,

Gone are the cares of
Life’s a busy throng
Beautiful Dreamer
Awake unto me
Beautiful dreamer,
Awake unto me

I woke up today with my two youngest getting all the Christmas decorations down.  I cringed at the thought of seeing all the memories, luckily I am still nursing a hurt back so I didn’t have to help.  They told me that Christmas was always happy, and they needed it to be happy.  I felt a little heart squeeze knowing they really needed to embrace something else for awhile besides all this sadness they have been feeling.  

I left to see if I could get my back adjusted and came home to everything Christmas all over the house.  The pictures from sitting on Santa’s lap and the picture of Multnomah falls with all four of my girls with their little smiling faces stared back at me.  In every corner, my girls had hung garland, glitter and twinkly, sparkly lights.  Looking around  I remembered the end of my dream and all the sparkling lights.  Of course, she loved everything sparkling and twinkling and shiny.  Oh, how she loved to sparkle and adored everything Christmas, thank you for reminding me, my beautiful dreamer.