Over the past few weeks I’ve been talking to friends about how much I miss cuddling with someone. It’s something I like to do and did it alot with my daughter when she was alive.

We would watch a movie or TV show on the couch and cuddle and laugh. It was the some of the best times in our lives. There were also the bad, with her illness and all that came with taking care of a chronically ill child. But that’s a whole other post.

Today I want to tell you how, I believe, our loved ones come to us in dreams. I think that since I have been focusing on the need for closeness with someone that Brittany has been sensing that. Of course, through the eyes of God. I have read in several books that people who have died come and visit us in our dreams as a means to comfort us. I know this has happened to me with Brittany 3 times. This morning was the 3rd time.

It is usually very quick and to the point. And it is always what I need. I must have hit the snooze button 4 times and then eventually turned off the alarm. This type of behavior is so unlike me. But of course, it was for a reason. A reason that would make me smile and then fall apart and make my heart just ache with the reality of her absence.

I was standing in a room and she came running in, looking like should would if she was alive today. Her hair up in a pony tail, wet, wearing a pair of shorts and shirt I said in the dream she had worn to bed. She was rushing around getting ready to go somewhere.  I said to her “what’s going on” and she replied “I’m late mom, I have to go”, as she began to run out, I said “wait, don’t I get a hug?” and she came and gave me the biggest hug. And then I woke up.

I got up immediately and began to get ready for work. But the memory of that dream began to creep back into my mind. Then the flood came. The grief washed over me like a watershed. I was overcome by the loss of my girl and the emptiness that prevails in my life. You see the loss is more than the death. It is the emptiness, the whole in my heart, the void of love, the constant reminders that I not only lost my daughter, but the life I knew and loved.

Memories are such a wonderful things for us grievers. It’s all we have left. Some days those memories are enough to sustain us and some days they are not. Memories can also be the means to bring us to the brink of madness. The reminder of a life in the past, one that we no longer have, yet miss terribly. They also remind us of the life we have now and the importance to move forward. To keep the memories positive and to keep their memories alive in an honorable way.

I miss my daughter more than I could ever say in words. But I would never want those dreams to stop. Even as painful as they are – it’s all I have left.

Until next time

m