Dream Visits
It's like 1:30 in the morning but I just *had* to write a quick post. Not last weekend, but the weekend before my 7 year old son attended a family funeral with me. (So did my 3 year old daughter and my mother, but their presence has no bearing on this story.) While attending the service, there were many First Nations rituals observed, including drumming and singing, "Inviting the Ancestors," the wearing of ceremonial blankets, etc. My son was fascinated by these markers of culture and asked many questions. He wanted to speak with an Elder who was in attendance about how to speak with the ancestors, and kneeled at the feet of a couple (a male and a female Elder) who had been part of the drumming circle while they explained some teachings about the Ancestors.
I was so proud of him.
He asked me if, by drumming and calling the Ancestors at the service, we might be able to communicate with Pa. I told him it should be possible, and that while he would not experience Pa's presence the way the presence of the ancestors was shown in a movie we had watched a night or two before (Kubo and the Two Strings -- totally worth watching, btw), our people can literally speak with the ancestors. It is a power of our people. I told him that if, in his heart, he invited Pa to come visit him, to come speak with him, then he may receive the gift of a dream where Pa will come to talk with him while he is sleeping.
(As an aside, I have had, all my life, the experience of dreaming of the beloved departed. I always referred to these as "visits" when I spoke of them in the daytime, and always in the dream knew that they were special experiences and recognized them as such in the moment of the dream. I used to say that, because that person was there I knew I was either dreaming or dead. The visits always felt very different than a dream where the image of a person who had passed on before was simply part of the dream landscape, and I would classify them as lucid dreams. It wasn't until very recently, in expanding my knowledge of First Nations culture, reading and speaking with others, that I discovered that this dreaming of the departed is a "done thing." That many First Nations people experience this, and it is very common to speak with the dead in our dreams.)
So I told him, at the celebration of our cousin's life, that in his heart he could invite Pa to come visit in his dreams. And, I admit, after that conversation, I more or less forgot to follow up.
This morning, the first thing my daughter said to me was that she had a "good graveyard dream." What on earth did that mean, I wondered. She said it was a good graveyard dream because Pa was there and she talked with him. She couldn't remember anything else about the dream, but that it was good. Even after she said that, I thought nothing special of it. I got bound up in wondering if the dream had been set in her mind at the local graveyard because that's the place she most strongly associates with Pa (both kids always wave and say "hello" to Pa when we drive by), or if there was some other significance to that.
Then this afternoon, as I was dropping the kids and their dad off at the park, my son pointed at a house on the street and mentioned that he had dreamed about a house like that, but not that house, where he had visited Pa last night. I heard that and it jolted me. I called him over and asked more questions.
He said that in the dream the house looked similar, but it wasn't exactly the same. It wasn't in that spot on the hill and it had different furniture. The house across the street from where we were parked just reminded him of the dream. In the dream he was inside the house with Pa for a visit. They talked, and he invited Pa to come over to our house to visit. Pa said he preferred if my son came to visit him at this dream house. They went together into the yard, and Pa helped him find special things and treasures. He couldn't remember what they were, but he had an overall pleasant, warm-fuzzy feeling about the dream.
I was floored. Both my children, on the same night, received a dream visit from their grandfather, my dad! My heart just swells to imagine it!