Do I stay in this recurring dream...

I am torn. I do not dream about Grace. It is one of my failings that bothers me most in these later years. No matter how much I try to conjure them up on my own (and I do try), I do not dream about her. I envy people who dream about their children. I have found from the many families I've met over the years, that some people dream often and many not at all. So once again, I am not alone. I am never alone.

And still. Still, I envy the dreamers.

So last night, when I dreamed about Grace, when I knew I was dreaming about Grace, I was torn. Do I stay in this recurring dream that keeps happening over and over again or do I leave it? 

A few months ago I was intrigued by a podcast I heard about Lucid Dreaming so I did what I do and I went a bought and read a book about it: Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming. And much to my questioning mind's eye, it worked. With a few nights of practice, I could remain in my dreams with just a few tweaks in the moment.

So last night when Grace appeared in my dreams, when my body was re-living her birth and death over and over again in my dream, I asked myself this question: Do I stay in this dream or do I leave? I was there with Grace. I could see her and touch her and hold her and feel her. I could feel her in my body and then out. 

The problem of course is that this dream was filled with so much trauma. I kept waking up and falling asleep and giving birth over and over again to my dead child. In this dream, I could feel my body splitting open and pushing her out and my breasts filling up with milk that would first turn painful and then turn red and then turn dry. I could feel her head crowning and myself pulling her back in just one more moment before my body did what it did and before she came sliding out, Grace and I still connected with an umbilical cord whose jobs of providing nutrients and oxygen was no longer needed.

This dream came at me in waves over and over again, the pushing and sliding out and there she was in my arms again and again and again.

And throughout the night as I lay there dreaming, and still lucid and still wondering if I should end these dreams or stay in them, I remember thinking Here she is. Here she is.

I'm  certain you know what I chose. Because dead or alive, I would if I could choose my child over this absence. I would choose to have this dream every night, no matter how worn I feel the next day because Grace was present and I was holding her and I could feel her and she was here among us.

Everything that you expect to happen, happened next. I woke extremely early in the morning, exhausted, spent and sad beyond words, beyond senses. Sad. 

But then I realized the gift in all of this. In the ten years compressed into one night, taking time and bending it in ways I didn't know was possible. Giving me another moment with Grace, suspended in dream-like fashion, to hold her, to be a mother again to her, to whisper things into her ear that only a mother and daughter share, to be her mother. 

And the question of staying or leaving my dream need never be asked again.