Dreams

There hasn’t been much time for Farmhouse life lately, though I hope soon that will change. I agreed to give a series of lectures to the psychiatry residency on brain anatomy. For me, the ratio of prep time per lecture is at least 10 to 1, which means after a lot of procrastinating I’m down to the wire and need to be doing a lot of preparing.

I had a dream last night that does not require much imagination to interpret. I was working to clean up a shabby old house I had somehow acquired. This has been a recurring feature in my dreams for years. Sometimes it is a shabby old house, other times it is a shabby old office in a remote part of wherever I work. It is not symbolic of the Farmhouse, this I know. These dream are not fretful, by the way. There’s always something appealing about exploring these spaces and making them mine. Of course then I wake up, and the next time I have the dream it is in a completely different place.

In last night’s dream I’m talking with my mother. You should know in the waking world my 92-year-old mother has advanced Alzheimer’s, but otherwise is miraculously healthy. About a year ago it seemed the end might be near. Then she started eating again and eventually started walking again, and now if the nursing home staff wonders where the broom might have gotten off to, they check her room to see if she’s borrowed it to sweep the floors. I was able to visit her during my recent trip to Oklahoma, by the way. She was minimally verbal, but there was a hint in her eyes that she might have recognized me. I haven’t seen that in a while.

Anyway, in the dream, while I’m cleaning the shabby new old house I’ve acquired, I’m also talking with my mother. I’m telling her that I’m feeling quite stressed by the fact I’ve chosen to start another medical residency. I’m recalling how difficult my previous residencies were and am not looking forward to the stress and the long hours. Interpreting this part of the dream seems pretty obvious to me: it’s the upcoming lectures. In the dream my mother says some typically motherly, comforting things that I don’t remember.

Then she says “It’s good to talk to you again. I know this won’t last. Soon I’ll be back to not remembering, but for now it’s good to see you.” And she hugs me, and I wake up.

We humans have the capacity to create an internal representation of our world that is, in almost all respects, as real to us as the actual one we inhabit. Our brains use this space to explore the outside world and make it ours. So yes, the dream was bittersweet, but ultimately tilted far toward the sweet side. I did not wake up sad.

Alzheimer’s doesn’t let you say goodbye to someone. You keep hoping they’re in there until you finally have to admit they’ve been gone for a while. So the dream was a chance to catch up and also say goodbye. For me, it was just as real as if I had said it in the waking world.