The Widower’s Rant: Sweet Dreams

Oct 15, 2024

5 min read

I dreamt about Beth the other night. It’s not the first time since she died. This dream happened during the luxurious sleep between a too-early eye-opening and just before I awakened for the day. Unlike the other recent dreams, in this one, we kissed. It was wonderful. To feel loved. To look into her brown eyes once again and see my forever partner. Then I woke up. And she wasn’t there. It was a dream. The reality that she was not here pressed me deep into the bed. Owie. Owie. Owie. Sobbing before you get out of bed isn’t the best way to begin a day. Kellogg's has not made a commercial exclaiming this as a great way to start your day. But I started it, and all in all, I had an excellent day. It was downright wonderful. Maybe I should pitch this as a new breakfast cereal idea. Start your day with Sob Flakes. Every moment after is going to be better.

The contradiction of being genuinely happy and having great fun most of the time and then suddenly, unexpectedly, being kneecapped with a quick bought of grief is by far one of the most challenging adjustments I’m learning to make. I've generally been emotionally even-keeled. Feeling the feels is exhausting. As I was flying home from the recent East Coast swing of Grief Tour 2024, I reflected on what a nice time I had with family and great friends. And then Beth jumped into the front of my mind, and without warning, I started to weep. Fortunately, I had a window seat to appear captivated by the unfolding Kansas landscape—in the dark—and not a Widower ranting against reality.

As it turns out, crying on airplanes is a relatively common experience. I remember from my many trips over oceans to other continents feeling more emotional than expected while watching a movie or listening to a song. The combination of travel stresses, mild hypoxia, minor dehydration, and often exacerbated by alcohol (Let’s see: Check, Check, Check, and Check) can lower cognition and cause us to be less able to regulate our emotions and manage stress. Thanks, Science! But I digress.

I dream frequently, serially, and repetitively. If a rare dream is bad, I can usually make myself wake up to stop the movie. If I wake up in the middle of an interesting dream, more often than not, as I fall back asleep, the next episode unfolds. It’s like cheap Netflix, but you get to be the star in all the shows. An only child's paradise. If only I could get residuals. My most frequent dream is running late to catch a flight. It's not like running through the airport late, but a whole day of meetings and whatnot where I keep looking at my watch because everyone is conspiring through neglect to make me late. The anticipation of being late is unbearable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, with as much travel as I’ve done, I can’t recall missing a flight not caused by the airlines. I also stress about not having the right clothes for new events in the middle of a dream. That’s probably a field day for a therapist. How can I not have infinite clothes readily available to me in the middle of a dream? It’s not like you start the dream and pack first. So you’ve learned a lot about me. I stress about missing flights and not having the right outfit. I live right at the top of Maslov’s Hierarchy. Perhaps a new 6th level.

Our life together was like a dream. A very good dream. In addition to Beth telling me that I was her Magic Carpet for my travel prowess (she also didn’t like to be late), she also told me that I was her Happily Ever After. That’s how our life felt. We grew stronger together through the formative years of raising children, navigating my random walk of a career, seeing our kids become independent adults, and being able to enjoy the fruits of this journey in our life together in the Geyserville Farmhouse with the scary dogs. I don’t think I remember it in the rearview mirror with overly rose-tinted glasses. We both felt lucky to have the other in our life.

I suppose that’s one of the reasons why this loss is so hard, but also why my resilience is stronger than I thought possible. We told each other we felt lucky to have the other as a partner. That we were grateful. That we didn’t take it for granted. I don't think there are unsaid words of love, affection, respect, and admiration. Yes, there’s an enormous hole in the room. But that hole is also filled with a love that’s not going away. It’s irreplaceable. Indelible. I look at the photo to the right of this screen; it’s Beth holding an ice cream cone like an Olympian holding her gold medal aloft. And I smile.

Over the decades, well before the words Multiple Myeloma or Cardiac Amyloidosis entered our collective vocabulary, I have had one particularly bad, repetitive dream. Twice a year on average, I’d guess. In this dream, Beth, in her typical matter-of-fact way, announces that she is leaving me. Her explanation is devoid of emotion or further explanation. It’s just a fact, like the sun setting in the west. The dream is never a short story. There’s a series of regular daily events with the overhang that Beth is leaving me. It’s terrible. I beg, plead, and cry uncontrollably in this dream. I have woken just enough at times to hear me exhort, “Please, no!” But Beth is resolute and unwavering. Her mind is made up. In a disturbing contradiction, she is extra nice to me during this dream. We go about our day in normalcy, and I grapple with the incongruity at the end of the dream day that she will leave me.

This dream was my ultimate nightmare. It was so bad that I often forced myself to wake up—to end the dream, to end the suffering. Then, I looked to my right and saw Beth sleeping. It was a bad dream, after all. I would exhale in relief. Sometimes, I wanted to wake her to ask her if she still loved me, to make sure. The dream was that unnerving.

I haven’t had this dream in 27 weeks (yup, still counting). Instead, my ultimate nightmare became my reality. After years of an unimaginable scenario that Beth would matter-of-factly and unceremoniously leave me, she’s done exactly that. If only I could look to my right and see her sleeping peacefully. Instead, I look to my right and see an empty pillow or a color photo in a black frame. An image that jars me awake into my new reality.

Unlike my nightmare, though, I enjoy beautiful sunny days and new adventures. There’s no begging or pleading. I accept the reality of the situation. I sometimes ask in abject disbelief to no one in particular, “How can you not be here?” No answer is forthcoming. It’s such a contradiction that I feel Beth around me, in me, yet the pillow is untouched. But as long as I have dreams, we can still live happily ever after.