I fell asleep beneath the flowers.

“In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parent who loses a child.”

Dream journaling. The objective is to write down anything and everything you can remember passing throughout your subconscious first thing in the morning when you awake. I exercised this method for two weeks. By the end of my two week experiment I could remember in specific detail what I was dreaming. While I have not practiced this recently or regularly, I have found I still have quite the ability to remember my renderings from the night before. I write this to suggest that dreams can lead us to unpremeditated truths. Yes, for the most part dreams are just dreams - images that appear involuntarily to the mind unaware, real and imaginary characters, places and events. Many times revealing things hoped for, longings, and aspirations. Much of it so far removed from reality of present circumstances, it is fantasy. “Dreams are the Royal Road to the Unconscious" -Sigmund Freud. Freud was heavily fascinated by dream interpretation, relying upon symbolism in dreams to unravel some deeper meaning. For example, if I was to dream I was pregnant, many would examine a dream such as this and say the obvious, you are longing to be with child, or it is an event very near in your future. Symbolism applied to this dream would say much of the same, or that is it representative of being pregnant with something else. Not with child, but maybe a new life experience. Expectant with the possibility of a re-birth in life. Perhaps a new home, job, relationship, etc. While I am not entirely dismissing this approach, I also don’t put much stock into it.

However, while most dream encounters are farce, I propose the idea that a minute amount of our dream renderings can be that of the super-natural realm. In a previous blog I wrote about a dream where I encountered my late brother. That was not the first time I had dreamt of Matthew. Shortly after his death I would have dreams that he would show up knocking on my doorstep in the pouring rain, excitedly explaining that he had never left. I would awake confused and caught in between false hope and reality. About two weeks ago I awoke from the most peculiar dream about my brother yet. It was nothing like the previous dreams, where he was a manifestation of himself just before his death. He was an infant. And I was carting him around in my arms everywhere I went, introducing him to friends, family and strangers alike. I concluded that this wacky dream was putting the intrinsic relationships that were built between Matt and others into perspective. He wasn’t just a brother, he was some ones friend doing ridiculous three stooges impersonations, he was some ones first kiss, and he was some ones prayer warrior. He was some ones fishing buddy. He was an extension of a mothers love. He was a son. It helped me to realize the tremendous inset of grief my mother and father must have coped with in his exit. Yes, I lost a sibling, but to endure the loss of your own offspring seems almost unimaginable. It is hard to empathize the loss of a child, to understand what its like to have your miracle to be in existence on this earth and then on any ordinary day just disappear.

Shortly after Matt’s footstone was put into place at the cemetery my mom carried out a bouquet of sunflowers to his grave site for a visit. She was uneasy at the idea of leaving roses and the like on his grave, seeing that traditional flowers are not at all masculine. So she settled on the idea of the sunflowers. Dad likes to keep a garden in the backyard. And wouldn’t you know weeks after mom carried out those sunflowers to the cemetery, there in our backyard garden were sunflowers superciliously on display. Growing up all rowdy and crazy like. It was as if Matt was saying, “Hello family…I am here, and you aren’t getting rid of me that easily.” My rents moved into a new home last July. Dad planted his garden in the backyard of our new home, like he does. While the rents were out of town this month, they asked me to water and keep the garden. One afternoon while I was carying out my daughterly duties, there it was. A single sunflower, standing tall and bright. I smiled at it, and it smiled back. A new sunflower is currently pushing through in the front yard too…

Is it probable that Matt is conveying peace to us through sunflowers and unsuspecting dreamful sleep? Why not? He is kicking it in heaven with Jesus; I presume they can do whatever they like. I like to think of it as a declaration. Kind of similar to the way God used a rainbow in Genesis to symbolize his promises to Noah. I recently finished reading a novel by Jodi Picoult entitled, “My Sister’s Keeper.” The last three chapters of this book were tragically enlightening for me. A family is grieving the loss of a child, a sibling. The following are my favorite excerpts from those chapters...

"THERE SHOULD BE A STATUTE of limitation on grief. A rule book that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after forty-two days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass --- it only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it is okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.
Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-Aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception. There were times I stayed in my room for days on end with headphones one, if only so that I would not have to listen to my mother cry. There were the weeks that my father worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn’t have to come home to a house that felt too big for us.
Then one morning, my mother realized that we had eaten everything in the house, down to the last shrunken raisin and graham cracker crumb, and she went to the grocery store. My father paid a bill or two. I sat down to watch TV and watched an old I Love Lucy and started to laugh.
Immediately, I felt like I had defiled a shrine. I clapped my hand over my mouth, embarrassed. It was Jesse, sitting beside me on the couch, who said, “She would have thought it was funny, too.”
See, as much as you want to hold on to the bitter sore memory that someone has left this world, you are still in it. And the very act of living is a tide: at first it seems to make no difference at all, and then one day you look down and see how much pain has eroded. "

Do I fear there might be a morning when I wake up and Matt’s face is a blur in my memory? Or if I find a day that I can’t remember his jokes, or the way he carried about the purest concern for his little sister? When I start to feel this way I read over past records I have logged of our time together, or peer out the window to see my smiling sunflower. I take him with me, wherever I go.
When I decided to take my writing to a public level, I never really thought it would have much impact. I have been pleasantly surprised by the many people whom have approached me in appreciation and encouragement for some of my writings. Whether they are expressing laughter, sorrow, or comfort that followed, it was profound to see that there was some impression made. So for anyone who asks, why does Penny keep writing such things? This is why. If I could touch one lonely soul. If I could be so bold, to be a spark, to be a light. Set one heart on fire. That’s all I ever wanted.

Ecclesiastes 3
There's a Right Time for Everything
1 There's an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:
2-8 A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.
9-13 But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I've had a good look at what God has given us to do—busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he's left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he's coming or going. I've decided that there's nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That's it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It's God's gift.
14 I've also concluded that whatever God does, that's the way it's going to be, always. No addition, no subtraction. God's done it and that's it. That's so we'll quit asking questions and simply worship in holy fear.
15 Whatever was, is.
Whatever will be, is.
That's how it always is with God.

All of this to say, I love you mom and dad. Matt, ill be seeing you, in all the familiar places.

…Sweet dreams…