In September 2000, my husband fell at work and hit his head. Three hours later, he was pronounced legally brain-dead. Seventeen hours later, I walked behind him as the medical personnel wheeled his ICU bed into the operating room where I said my final good-bye.
Then I went home to begin my new—unwanted—life as a young widow.
Five hours later, his heart, pancreatic islets and kidneys were removed and successfully transplanted into waiting recipients.
He was 32. We both were.
Four years later, I had an unsettling but potent dream. In my dream, he had survived his fall but had been left with serious brain injuries and was in a vegetative state; alive but not able to communicate or care for himself. In my dream, I was pushing him in his wheelchair along the hard-packed sand of a beautiful beach. Then I turned his wheelchair towards the water…and pushed it right into the water.
I continued pushing the wheelchair until the water reached his chest. Then I walked around the wheelchair and gently pulled him out of the chair towards me. I lay back in the water, holding his body to mine, and stared into his vacant eyes as we both slowly drowned.
Then I woke up.
I happened to be on vacation with my mom at the time, so I told her about the dream. “I can’t believe how real it was,” I said.
“Ahh,” she said. “That’s what it would have been like if he had survived in real life. You both would have drowned. Caring for a severely brain-injured husband would’ve been your life.”
“But I would’ve cared for him!” I cried. “I was totally prepared to do that.”
“Oh, I know you would’ve,” she said. “We all know that…which is why it is a blessing he didn’t survive.”
“Mom!”
“You were spared from an extremely difficult life, Maryanne.”
“I know,” I said.
“But you feel guilty about that, don’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“You need to let that guilt go.”
“I’m trying…”
My mom thought a moment then said: “Maybe the purpose of your dream was so that you could feel…actually experience…what that alternate ending would have really been like? Maybe deep down, you still think it would have been better if he had lived?”
She was right. For four years, I had been holding on to a powerful belief in my subconscious mind. And that belief was this: if I truly loved my husband, as much as I said I did, then I should have wanted him to live…regardless of the extent of his injuries or quality of life.
Although I missed him, I had forged a brave new life. I was happy and fulfilled…on my own.
I admitted to myself an uncomfortable truth: I was thankful he didn’t survive his injuries. I was grateful…blessed…that I didn’t have to care for him for the rest of our lives. Deep in my heart, I know I would have. But I’m awfully glad that wasn’t our destiny.
When I could finally be honest with myself about the deeply-rooted belief—that I didn’t truly love him because I was thankful I didn’t have to care for him—then I was able to let it go.
And when I let go of the belief that was no longer serving me (and was likely holding me back like an anchor in my soul), then I could also release the emotion attached to that belief: guilt.
How about you? What belief might you be holding on to—way down deep in your subconscious mind—that might need to be held up and examined in the light of day?
Sometimes the dreams we have in the night can help reveal to us what those beliefs are.
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