I talk to a parent whose daughter passed just over a year ago. She was about the same age as Shayna. We are talking about signs and dream visits. We agree on how unfair it is that our children can see us, hear us, even hear our thoughts; they are as close as a breath or a heartbeat away we are told. Yet, we cannot sense them most of the time. We get signs, but we want those dream visits. We want to hear their voices, see their faces, touch them, hug them. I tell her that I have had very few dreams of Shayna since her passing. Always, Shayna has come as a little girl- maybe around age 4-6 years old, not the 15 year old Shayna that she was when she passed.
I go to bed and I’m having what is a normal, totally crazy dream. I’m on the telephone talking to one of my neighbors as I’m walking through this giant building like the student union at Ohio State. We’re just making idle conversation. I sit down at a table. I look up and two girls enter the room. One of them looks a lot like Shayna and I think to myself “Wow, that girl looks a lot like Shayna.” This is 15 year old Shayna, tall and skinny. Her hair is even short, the way she cut it a couple of months before she passed. Then, I hear her voice. She’s playing “eeny meeny miny mo” to choose a table to sit at. She’s talking so fast, like only Shayna could talk and I see her flash that perfect smile. Then I feel her energy in the room. It’s impossible, but it’s her. It’s Shayna. I get this feeling of how much I have really missed her how I have pushed that aside out of necessity to get through the days. Now that I can see her again, it comes rushing in. I stand to walk over to her and I call out “Hey baby….”. She looks up and me and start to walk toward each other. I’m so excited to see her that it breaks the spell. We both start to disappear. I feel this rush come through my body as her energy passes through me and I wake up in my bed covered in goosebumps.
I keep asking “Why don’t we get dream visits more often?” And, I wonder why Shayna is also so young in the dreams I have of her. As I’m reminiscing over the moment I had with Shayna before I came out of the dream state I think perhaps the reason I don’t get the visits more often is they leave me with more longing than I had before. I realized in that moment when I saw Shayna what I have been missing for almost two years now. Even if I could have held her, sat and talked with her and spent time with her, i know it would never have been enough and I’d wake up just wanting more.
