Great Christian Diaries

2003-10-24 - 9.45am  previous entry  next entry

It's 8.30am and I have only had 4 hours sleep so far but I'm here because I just woke up from a dream and I can't go back to sleep till I write about it. I shouldn't go back to sleep anyway because otherwise the whole morning will disappear, but I'm so so tired.

I had weird dreams. In one of them we woke in the middle of the night to the sound of running water, and the bathroom was flooding all down the stairs. The walls fell down and there were electric wires hanging everywhere that were dangerous. Neil kept going near them to check stuff and it scared the diddly out of me. Even so I could hardly keep awake and I kept saying to people that I'd only had 3 and a half hours sleep. Weird.

Then I had my first Cameron dream. The first one. I knew I would have a dream about Cam eventually, so it's happened. I do not want to go back to sleep without writing it down because I know I'll forget some of it if I do. Man it's cold this morning. There's thick white frost on the cars and rooftops. It's the first frost I've seen this autumn. I like frost and wintery signs, but this morning I am distracted so here we go.

In my dream I had been getting so worried about how Cameron's family were coping with his death. The dream was so real. I AM really worried about them. I knew his mum had said she would get in touch when she was ready, and that it might be a while, so I knew I shouldn't be trying to contact them. However I couldn't bear not knowing anymore, and so I drove to his house. I had bought something for Cameron, well, in tribute to him, and I planned to lay it on the doorstep before I left. I wanted to just.... be there somehow. Show them I loved them and was thinking of them.

The ONLY thing in the whole dream that was unrealistic was the fact that I was driving a weird car that was just a frame so was pretty see-through. Anyway I drove there. As I got near the house, I saw a van pull up in front of it, and I realised it must be the family. I thought I recognised it as Cam's dad's work van. So I stopped in my tracks, right in the middle of the road, and ducked down. I didn't want them to see me because they might feel annoyed that I hadn't left them alone for long enough. They got out of the van and they were there ages because they seemed to have loads of stuff to unpack. Anyway another vehicle arrived and pulled up in front of me. I was still trying to hide. But it was obviously to do with them too, because Cam's mum came walking right up to it and started unpacking things from there too. I was scared she would see me but I was pleased to get a good look to see how she looked. She looked okay. Tired and drained and pale but okay.

This dream was so so so so so vivid and detailed and real, I can't tell you. Anyway then ANOTHER car turned up and I was in the way. I got out of my car and hid behind it as they walked around my car. But the frame was see-through so I couldn't hide too well. Anyway Cam's mum didn't see me. She started getting groceries out of the third car, parked a few yards away from me in the middle of the road. Michael, Cam's little brother, climbed out of that car. I wondered where the new baby was and how big he must be getting now. And then, just like it was a completely normal thing, out climbed Cameron. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. I did not understand it but it was definitely him, and looking as normal and lively as ever. He and Michael were mucking about and their mum was trying to dodge them with grocery bags and telling them not to get in the way, really normal stuff.

I was absolutely rooted to the spot. I didn't want to make my presence known but I could not take my eyes of Cameron. I felt it was enough just to see him, and if he was alive then I would have the chance to see him again another day, so it didn't matter. Nothing mattered actually, now that I'd seen him. Then a bloke came over and wanted me to move my car so I had to stand up and I tried to have my back to the family all the time and stand differently to normal so they didn't see me.

But Cameron saw me. I saw him change, he got excitable and stared my way a lot, and kept asking his mum questions that I couldn't quite hear. I got so frantic about not being seen that I paid the guy to move my car and then set off walking away down the pavement. But Cameron appeared next to me, trotting to keep up, and his eyes were shining like stars. He only stayed there a second, just craning his neck to see if it was really me, and then he dropped back, slowing for a second, and I heard him shout, "Mum, it's really her!" He was by my side again in a moment, looking up at me like he couldn't believe it, like I was the one who had died. His eyes were full of tears and his mouth was all twisted up like when someone starts to cry. I gave in. I stopped trying to walk away and I put my arms round him and held him. He held me really tight like he never wanted to let go. Like he used to when he was little.

His mum came over then. I felt ashamed that I had been "stalking" them, but she just smiled and said she'd been meaning to tell people that Cameron was still here, but it took her by surprise so much that she hadn't got that together yet. Then while I was talking to her, Cam was suddenly covered in blood, all over his face and arms and hands and his whole T-shirt was stained to the waist. He was crying and sobbing and really distressed about it. His mum said he was okay, that this happened sometimes, that I didn't need to be alarmed. She gave Cam a book that he'd been carrying before he saw me, and went to check on Michael. I sat (there were chairs suddenly) and took Cameron in my arms to comfort him. He was still crying but chatting happily, and I remember thinking I did not care about getting blood on me. Nothing mattered, just so long as he was alive.

He showed me the book. I asked what was in it. He said they had just come back from a trip and they'd been to a restaurant where he'd been given a book to fill in to pass the time. He had a word search that he was halfway through filling in. That part was really vivid, looking at his handwriting in the boxes. I couldn't even see any clues, but the answers were in the boxes. Not all of them, but I could see plenty. They were phrases like, "I love you" and "Jesus loves me and I love him". Weird. I found it comforting to go over the answers with him and just to talk to him, just to have him that close to me in my arms.

I said, "I love you" but he didn't hear me. My mind was suddenly overwhelmed with how on earth this could be happening. Because there was a grave with a cross marker and flowers on it, I had just been there yesterday (this was realistic timing in my dream because of having really been to the cemetery yesterday). So how could he be alive as well? His mum came back just then, and she saw the look on my face and asked, "Is it hitting you at about the same time as it hit me?" I didn't know what she meant. She explained, "That Cam is still alive. It hits you after a bit doesn't it?" And after that I still could hardly believe it, but some part of me must have, because I started to feel immense joy like I wanted to squeeze Cameron to bits in huge hugs and never stop, or like I wanted to laugh and laugh with him or do a crazy dance holding his hands or something. But I sat with him close to me still, and when his mum had gone again, I started telling him how much I love him. But I still had the book open in my hands on my lap, and the more I talked to him, the less he seemed to be there, and the more I seemed to be talking to the book. I knew he was not hearing me but I felt panicky thinking that so I carried on hoping he'd take something in anyway. I just wanted him to hear how much I love him and how I wished I'd told him in the last year or so before he died. He never said anything back, never told me he loved me too, like he used to when he really was alive.

Then I woke up. For a moment the dream had been real and I lay there sooooo cosy and happy and with the most wonderful feeling. And then it only took a couple of seconds before I remembered it wasn't real and it was never going to happen and he is gone. I would have expected to cry or something but I didn't even feel like that. I felt empty and hollow and lonely and heavy inside. I would have turned back over to go to sleep, but I was scared to lose the dream and it had been so real to me and so vivid in every detail. So I came here to write it down.

Plus I had to make a doctor's appointment. I made one with the nurse-practitioner (sp?) because my doctor was full already :( So that's for 10.20 this morning and I hope it will go okay. I don't want to go. Oh but I don't have time to go back to bed actually do I, because that means I need to take my bath now and eat breakfast if I can, and then it will be nearly time to go. Oh well. Maybe it's good that I got up to write about my Cameron dream then.

Last night I felt so awful. I was tempted to write another diary entry to offload a little but it would have been more of the same stuff I wrote earlier and I didn't really know how to put it into words anyway so I didn't. I should have been ovulating around yesterday (or maybe today) so obviously that was THE time to try for a baby, but Neil said no he was too tired. So he went to bed, and I thought, pah, who cares about having a baby - I don't. Hmmm. I feel like giving the whole thing up now anyway. This should be in my other diary. Oh well.

I stayed up late waffling round the web. I made some crazy google searches that I feel weird for, but I FELT crazy last night. I have been distracted for a while about Cameron's body changing under the ground when I visit him. I know it's gross and I can't be normal for dwelling on it so much, but I just felt like I didn't want to leave anything to my imagination anymore, so I read up on decay rates. I know, what must you think of me? But I can't explain what has come over me lately. I am just obsessed and I know it's not right but I just am. It was hard to read about it, and I think if I didn't have a nurse's stomach (which I know I do) I would have wanted to gag at some of the info. But I wanted, needed, to know how long it would be before Cameron was unrecognisable, and before he was just bones. Ages apparently, which I feel relieved about somehow. He might not be just bones for about 12 years in his coffin. Why does this make me feel so relieved? He's dead anyway isn't he? So why does it matter? And what's the point in all this focus on what's left of him on this earth? He's not even here. He's still alive in heaven. Urgh. I don't think it's healthy of me.

I started searching under silly words like, "help". Please don't roll your eyes till you know what this feels like. And by the way, there's no "help" at google when you search under that word. Nothing helpful at all. But anyway I expanded it to bereavement support, and then I spent 40 minutes in a chat room for people who had experienced the death of someone they love, which was almost the weirdest thing I have ever done. People there were nice to me and very reassuring and encouraging, even when they had lost their husbands or brothers or parents. But I felt utterly unqualified to be there. I know what you'll all say, that yeah I do have a right to grieve and all that. But I feel so much the opposite. People said, "Can we ask the nature of your loss?" and then I think it would have been easier to leave the chat room rather than to tell them, because suddenly I realised I am not in their boat at ALL. I have no family connection to Cameron, no matter how much I keep harping on about him being mine in my heart. It doesn't make me family. It doesn't make him mine. It doesn't give me the experience of grief that a mother would have at all. I felt like a twit telling them about how I knew him and how I felt. Even when they were understanding.

I feel wretched. I have no claim on my feelings of grief, no connection to Cameron. I do not feel the "right" to grieve (I already know what you'll say, don't worry). I have nowhere to put my feelings, and nothing I can grab hold of to make sense of them.

I did look up Christian bereavement sites, but I didn't find many helpful ones. Most of them spout Bible verses at you and display images of men in suits kneeling in front of flowers in a cemetery. How is that helpful? Sorry. I know I'm a Christian and I love God, but last night and today I am feeling so detached and so.... annoyed at Bible verses. I don't want to read how Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus. I feel awful about that. I feel like I'm rejecting God. I know he wants me to open up to him about how much this hurts, and I also know that I am not doing that, I am shutting him out instead but it seems automatic, and the effort of letting him in is enormous and I don't even feel his presence when I do let him in at the moment. This is all so wrong. I don't like it.

Anyway, one of the Christian bereavement sites had some helpful links to information about the stages of grief and how best to live with them, which was really helpful to me. It made me feel so much better to understand grief and to see it all written down on the screen by someone who knows what they're talking about, because it confirmed for me that I really am grieving. I know that sounds silly, but I actually thought until now that I was just sad that Cam died, that I missed him, that I was heaping on the self-pity, and that it wasn't really grief. But it is. Even my anger lately, that's part of it. In fact everything I've been feeling. Even the suggested ideas of how long the stages last - so far - are accurate for me. I feel so reassured because it makes me feel a little better about grieving, like I can say that I own it now, because there, it's been diagnosed - sort of. Am I making sense? And oh boy, I was sooooo relieved to read that irritability, lack of libido, and relationship problems are all common issues in stage two of grief, which is where I'm at now. That gives me breathing space about all this parsnip stuff and how irritable I'm being with Neil, because maybe it's all just down to going through grief? I hope so. But then the website says this stage of grief can last up to a year. I hope it doesn't. I don't think I can take it. The website also said I should be making myself keep up with old activities and with friends and events. Whoops. And I don't want to - how am I supposed to when the pull in the opposite direction is too hard? I definitely do NOT want to just get back into the swing of life and see people again. I know it's wrong of me but I really feel like that would be letting go of Cameron in some way - even though he'd want me to - and I won't do that. I won't. I absolutely won't.

Well this could go on all morning but I have to take my bath now so I must stop. I will update to say how my appointment went. I really don't care about how it goes, since I don't give two monkeys about why parsnips is painful at the moment, and I don't care to have someone ask me personal questions or prod me in private areas today. I feel a bit delicate. But ho hum, it needs doing so off I go. I'll be back later I hope. And thank you so much to Julie, Meg (thanks for not being demonstrative, I'm really grateful for that at the mo), Mandy and Katie (whose diary you all must read!) for your really lovely guestbook messages. Friends are a wonderful thing.

Recent entries.....

Cameron's first anniversary - 2004-09-24
Update - 5th Anniversary and other stuff! - 2004-08-16
Church picnic and being happy and things :) - 2004-06-27
Barbeque at Cameron's house... - 2004-05-18
To Tara... - 2004-04-19