Dreams/dementia/how strange

[crinkletits]

Hi
For a very long time I’ve been having a recurring dream that my dad didn’t die of dementia (2017). It feel like real life everytime I have the dream. I dream my dad recovered from dementia and he’s gone on to lead a great life. I keep joking the dream at different slightly awkward places like explaining the reasons I made the decisions and discussions and experiences that we call pre post his illness.

Today I woke up (as usual) feeling a bit annoyed I guess that I turned my life upside down for him and he recovered and now I’m having to explain my decisions. I woke up thinking don’t forget to give dad back his paperwork for some banking I had. Meanwhile he’s having a great time living his very best life and I’m like an empty shell and exhausted from the whole thing. My first thought was, where ghe f have I put that paperwork. It feels like a different very real time line and it’s bizarre. Happens at least once a week.

Oh my goodness, OP. Dreams like this can throw you int emotional tumult can’t they.

My mother died a few weeks ago, and I keep having these waking moments of thinking ‘fuck, why did I tell everyone mum died? What a bizarre and macabre thing to do. Now I’ll have to explain to everyone that she’s fine.’

I think it’s the brain’s way of trying to make sense of grieving someone who was very hard to look after at the end of their life. The wish for a more straightforward grief maybe.

Sending you hugs.

I have exactly the same since my DB died! I wake up in the morning like ‘shit, how am I going to explain to people that he’s actually alive?!’ It’s so strange and quite distressing.

I’m sorry for your loss. It’s strange isn’t it - it’s like it is easier or preferable for me to believe that I’ve lost my mind, than that she is gone.

It’s funny you say that, because I had my first lot of grief counselling yesterday and I was saying to her that I think it would be easier if I just completely lost my mind. It’s the self awareness that’s the killer