I am walking through a house, some rooms are dark and some are quite light. Walking at my side is my sister. I know who she is because, well, I just know. She tells me she understood everything that we ever said to her and loves me.

She is young, fit and healthy looking - maybe about 30ish. She is smiling at me though she isn't making any bodily contact. Then I wake up, feeling immense comfort and love from her.

Important point for this:

On 19th January this year we laid to rest our lovely handicapped sister. She had been unable to grow physically and had been severely mentally handicapped and blind all her life. Her handicap had caused her physical appearance to be different from the rest of us but the girl I walked with last night was her, looking normal and fit and healthy. How do I know it was her? I just do.

I have been in tears all morning but feel comforted just the same.

Thoughts anyone?

Briggy



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/08/2012 05:59AM by brigantia.

I know everyone's thoughts on this will differ on here, as their are numerous beliefs about afterlife here.

As for my thoughts, that was your sister visiting you, letting you know she is safe, happy, and free of her disability. Dreams are the easiest way for the departed to talk with us as we are so busy and our minds so cluttered the rest of the day.

Just remember, whenever you are feeling sad or missing your sister, just talk to her. She's listening.

Those are my thoughts.

I believe that our departed loved ones come to visit us every now and then in our dreams. My mom has "visited" and told me some interesting things about my future.

I'll offer some thoughts to this as if there isn't a belief in an afterlife.

The mind is a large file system. It likes things to get put into the correct folder/file etc. We have developed a mind that can problem solve and sort files even when we are asleep. Your sister has been on your mind, and some "files" or thoughts haven't been fully assigned a meaning, and have been floating around waiting to be filed. Some of the things that we push out of our minds during waking hours gets sorted while we are asleep and can't interfere as much with the process, such as pushing thoughts out of our mind.

It seems that you have had some unfinished business with regard to your sister, and your mind used some down time to start sorting through it. If found some meanings that seemed to make sense, and built a dialog around it in an effort to sort through things. Sometimes we wake up and think that was awful with regard to dreams, but it still helps us make meanings about information that is stuck floating around. Sometimes we wake up peaceful, and the file sorting seems to have struck a meaning that was more helpful in getting us to make useful meanings.

Doing all this sorting and meaning making frees up psychic energy that is cluttering and slowing us down.

Just some thoughts if you wanted to approach it from a lack of belief in an afterlife or guiding spirits etc.

DNA - well said.

Dear Briggy

I think the dream was beautiful, an important touchstone in your grief. I've had similar dreams after the deaths of loved ones. They can be kind of a mixed blessing: on the one hand it is comforting to experience vividly the sense of the one for whom you grieve, on the other, the shock on waking that the person is truly dead brings a fresh sense of loss and new grief.

It sounds though that this was comforting, to see your sister in the wholeness of body and mind, to think of her as a mature and healthy woman.

When I think of my dreams on waking, I tend to see dreams about houses and living spaces as having to do with my mind or personality: the house represents 'me' in some sense. So as DNA suggests, it seems you may be working through your internal sense of your sister, your feelings for her and the relationship you had. You're recalling her in her completeness of person, going past the limitations she had in life.

I don't know -- none of us can know, truly -- whether there is a spirit or soul or what-you-may-call-it of individuals that survives death. I don't know if your dream originates solely in your mind or whether something outside you survives of your sister to come to you in your dreams. I don't think it really matters. So consider the dream as that, a dream. What matters is that you honour her memory and the love you shared and that she continues, in that way, as part of your life.

I send you good thoughts in your grief.

Your experience was real. I had a similar one years ago. The afterlife is bigger than all this wordly stuff we have to reckon with.

right on Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Your experience was real. I had a similar one
> years ago. The afterlife is bigger than all this
> wordly stuff we have to reckon with.

+1.

Briggy, thanks for sharing this.

These dreams are a normal part of grieving, in my opinion.

It is part of letting go to "see" the loved one as healthy and whole, set free from disease, old age, pain, suffering.

I dreamed my son was hanging out on his headstone at the cemetery, drinking a beer. He felt bad about all the bad choices he had made and how he hurt the people he loved. He told me he was sorry. This dream seemed to last all night as he and I talked about his death and the effect on his brothers, etc.

It was a turning point in my own grieving and I was able to let him go after that, being able to finish his headstone.

I think our mind gives us the experiences we need to have closure and move on, just like it works out other problems for us to be healthy mentally during the day.

I believe that our Being joins the One Being that we are all a part of, the creative force of the universe that is love. To me, this is a haven.

Hugs, Briggy, as you work through this difficult time. You always saw the beautiful being inside your sister, who she really was, so it's perfectly natural that you see her that way in your dreams.



Anagrammy

I will take your advice and thoughts seriously. If it is just my brain sorting things out then that's okay - it is bringing some kind of closure. If it is a visit then I can honour that as well and take my comfort from it. The thing is, I agree with you, we just don't know for sure and need to take these things on face value.

If it helps then so be it. Anyway, I do feel better today so maybe I'm coming to terms with it all.

Once again, many thanks for all your kind thoughts and to my old friend Lorraine, hugs to you and your lovely family.

We're doing okay.

Briggy

My husband passed away only a few weeks after a very close friend of mine had passed away. Because my attentions had been with my husband, I never felt I had the chance to really say 'bood-bye' to this friend. Shortly after my husband's death I had a very lucid dream where she and I visited.

I awoke with the same immense feeling of comfort that you experienced. It was beautiful and loving and gave me a wonderful sense of closure and connection at the same time.

I do not try to explain it. I simply know that it was, without knowing, really, just WHAT it was. But that is enough. It is a gift which I accept without question.

I'm very glad you have had such a comforting experience!

I think you are remembering you sister has you see her as she was inside, and not by what the world saw.

Maybe it's a combination of all the above.

I, too, believe that was your sister. And this gives me chills, literal chills. Because I have had this happen to me with my mother. She looked youthful and I touched her arms and put her hands in mine and she was young and she smiled carefreely and in her eyes was love and joy, and it seemed really REAL!! For a long time I have excused it as if it really was just a dream and that can't really happen. But now that I hear this, it makes me wonder again. Was this just my mind? It was REAL. And I felt so good and happy like she wasn't suffering and was her young self. It was a gift. That dream was about 19 years ago.

Wish fulfillment. Dreams are a projection of our own desires and fears.

Your love for her is real. A dream isn't, no matter how much we wish it to be.

I don't say that to be harsh or cruel. Dreams can also be dark and disturbing as our mind works through inappropriate guilt. What comfort they bring is a double-edged sword. And I think believing they are anything more than what our mind is trying to process can be dangerous.

Dreams are not reality. But that does not change your love for your sister or what she meant to you.

When I was grieving the sudden death of my father, decades ago, I dreamed that the citrus tree in our back yard was struck by lightning. The tree fell and knocked open the back door. The top of the tree spilled into the kitchen (where the back door was located). As I watched, the leaves of the dying tree began to open, like rose petals. When the last of the leaves opened, inside was a caterpiller, very much alive.

I took this dream as a message from my dad that life goes on, the form just changes. I think your sister might be saying something similar to you.