Letters to my sons.

Dear boys,

last night I had a really strange dream that has left me in a very funny mood today and the only way out of this rut is to explore it.

In the dream I was at the top of a staircase playing with a toy Lego truck while being bullied by my brother (Uncle Phil). We were both adults and I didn’t recognise the house we were in, it wasn’t somewhere I have lived. I was getting annoyed about being bullied when I heard my iPhone ring at the bottom of the stairs. I left the toy truck and my brother at the top of the stairs and came down, got my phone from my trousers that were in a heap on the floor and saw that it was my mother calling. This has happened in real life as the line land number she shared with my father and her mobile number are in my address book. When my dad (your grandfather) calls or sends me an SMS the phone attributes it to my mother. I can not bring myself to change or alter the record in my phone.

Back to the dream and I felt a great forbidding when I saw who was calling. I pressed the Answer button, put the phone to my ear and said “Hello”. The voice that replied was unmistakably that of my mother. “Hello son, it’s your mother” she said. This was what she always said when she called me. In my dream I felt a knot appear in my stomach and I thought “Does she know she is dead?”. I didn’t know what to say so I asked how she was and she said she was fine and then said “Is Lewis with you?” “No” I replied. “Oh” she replied, “then I’m in trouble.”

It was at that point that I woke up. The knot in my stomach that was so real in my dream had spread to my whole body and I felt paralysed. I wasn’t able to wipe the sweat from my sticky brow for a good few minutes despite the fact that my brain was awake and buzzing.

So what does it all mean? For me as an atheist it has no spiritual meaning. I don’t believe that it was a message from beyond the grave but my sub-conscience sorting it’s self out. I hadn’t thought about my mother in the last couple of weeks, since Wendy Richard died. It was the fact that cancer killed them both but Wendy was two years younger when she died. I’m not a psychotherapist so I have no idea what the underlying themes of the dream were, I need to talk to your mothers friend Yoram as he is an expert in the field. My hypothesis is that I am still missing my mother and from time to time I forget that she is not with us anymore.

When your Uncle Wayne died I had an extraordinarily vivid vision of Wayne stood next to my mother. My mother was wearing her usual house clothes and Wayne was wearing long trousers, a t-shirt and his flat cap. They were both looking straight ahead, the height difference between my 5 foot 5 inch mother and 6 foot tall Wayne very apparent . I couldn’t hear what she was saying but I knew my mother was telling one of her dirty jokes. Wayne was leaning forward slightly and laughing his huge deep and infectious laugh – although I couldn’t hear it, I knew it was happening. This wasn’t a dream, I had the vision in broad daylight. 

Again I don’t feel that there was anything spiritual in this vision. I think that it was just a coping mechanism as I knew the stress that was coming in having to fly across the Atlantic and then the actual funeral before flying back. I knew that while in Trinidad I would have to see Wayne’s mum and dad (your Grandfather and mother), his brothers and sisters and his friends who would be upset and missing him – just like I was. I also knew I would have to support your mother and that we (me and your mother) would be separated for a while due to getting a passport for Kenny.

After having the vision I felt very relaxed and at peace. It helped make Wayne’s death and subsequent funeral easier for me to accept. I can understand how people can believe in an after life and messages from beyond the grave when you experience a vision or dream as vivid as I experienced. If I were alive in the middle ages, unaware of modern thinking on the workings of the brain, then some sort of god and afterlife would be the only explanation of what happened to me.

It is sad that my mother will never get to meet you Kenneth or to see the two of you grow up, along with Lewis and Myla. She would have been chuffed with you William as you have learnt how to use a knife and fork well before your 4th birthday, just like Uncle Phil. Maybe that was the real trigger for the dream – how proud she would have been knowing that you William can eat like a grown up.