THE DREAM

I was looking into a hospital cubicle. My husband was lying in bed with the blankets pulled up to his chest, his hands down beside him. No one told me he was dead, but somehow I knew that he was. Then the scene shifts; I'm out in a hospital hallway, and a man in a long-sleeve burgundy shirt is hugging me as I cry. He is telling me "You'll be okay. Everything will be okay."

I woke from the dream hollering my husband's name out. He said "What?" beside me. He was fine. So I told myself "It was just a dream," and I lay back down to sleep.

PAST THE DREAM... WHAT HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE

That Saturday, June 4th, while my husband was out golfing, he had a stroke. On the 7th, he was transferred up to a medical intensive care unit, where he had labored breathing and seizures.

On the 8th... I was out in the hospital hall, and his doctor was talking to me. He told me my husband was getting worse, and would probably die. A decision would soon have to be made about life support, that it would be easier if he could make that decision for me but he couldn't. I started crying. The doctor reached out, giving me a hug, as he said to me "Everything will be okay. You will be okay." I then opened my eyes and saw the burgundy shirt that the man in my dreams had on. Looking up at this doctor, I realized he was the doctor from my dreams. The last time I saw my husband, after they unhooked the vent from him, he looked just as he did in my dream.

On June 9th, my husband passed away. He was only 41 years and 4 months old.

NOTES

Keep in mind, up until my husband had his stroke, the doctor that treated him in the hospital was a complete stranger to us--we'd never seen him before.

I feel that there has to be a reason that the doctor in the dream turned out to be the same doctor in real life. It's strange: from day one when I met him, I felt as if I knew him already, yet never except in my dream had I met this doctor. I believe it's because I really saw the whole stay in the hospital played out in the dream, but I forgot it all except the shock at the end. It would explain why I felt so comfortable with this doctor. Actually, the doctor acted as if something felt odd to him too--he took to me, as if he knew me also.

--Lesa

REPLY

Dear Lesa:

First off, I'm sorry for your loss. I've had predictive dreams too, but never one so shocking. I dreamed for months about my dad dying before he was suddenly stricken with a rare syndrome, but he was 76 not 41, and the dreams lacked this kind of realism and detail.

I don't believe your dream was a call to action--what could you do to prevent a stroke coming out of the blue? But maybe it prepared you emotionally. If your dreams sensed an inevitable disaster ahead, warning you might be the most they could do. One of the first researchers into predictive dreams, J.W.Dunne, concluded that his dreams didn't see everything about the future, just his own future experiences. If he's right, the details about the doctor may not have any meaning--they're just how things turned out, and your dream just recorded the facts the way a snapshot picks up trivial details. On the other hand, the doctor sounds genuinely sympathetic and your dream chose to show him, not, say, you alone in the hospital. That may mean your dreaming mind trusts him.

A predictive dream like this is pretty jarring, quite aside from what it warned of. Predictive dreams have disturbing implications--not just "how can we see the future like that?" but "if things can be foreseen in detail, how can we have free will?" But such dreams aren't rare, they're not coincidences, and you're not crazy. I've also had detailed dreams warning me of future dangers I was able to avoid because of the dream. So the future's not carved in stone; we do have free will. But some things just aren't a matter of will--you can't stop someone else's stroke!

Personally, I take a little hope from such dreams, even when disaster CAN'T be averted. If our consciousness can travel in time and space like this, we're not tied to our bodies. Death may not mean as much as we fear.

So hang in there, cope with his loss as well as you can, and don't freak about the dream on top of everything else! Personally, I think it came to reassure you that time and maybe death itself aren't what they seem, but that won't help you much in the short run. Even if your dreams can see ahead, you still have to LIVE your life one day at a time, and you just faced about the biggest shock a person can have.

There's a well-documented tradition in many cultures saying that big shocks can open up a person to visions, predictive dreams, all sorts of odd abilities. So if you have more predictive dreams, don't be alarmed--they aren't necessarily warning of more life-and-death crises. A lot of mine are about little things now.

On the other hand, if you dream about your car's brakes going out, I'd have them checked! No joke--a lot of my predictive dreams were practical warnings. Fire hazards, car crashes, medical checkups... if your dreams warn you of something preventable, it's a waste not to act on them...

--Chris Wayan

UPDATE, AUGUST 5, 2005

How am I coping? Better than I would have ever imagined I would handle it. I know that without having had the dream and its insight, I'd be in a lot worse shape than I am. Being sad, crying, and everything else that goes along with losing my husband, just isn't for me. I miss him, love him, and would love to have him back, but nothing will ever make that happen. Then again, I believe that he could have been reincarnated soon after death.

--Lesa