Dying Dreams
He’s running motionless, his little legs seeming to slip backward, toward the monster he’s feverishly trying to escape.
It’s not real.
He’s standing at the jagged edge of a murderous cliff, an evil wind ripping at his Darth Vader pajamas, pulling him over.
It’s not real.
They’re just dreams. His nightmares.
““
The other night we were shepherding the little 5-year-old lad off to bed. He was restless, uneasy, and wanted to keep playing. Nothing new, really. We used the soft, deliberate tones of responsible moms and dads to tell him he needed good sleep for school tomorrow, and his response made our parental minds shit their mental pants…
I’m not sure how long I stared, calmly I hope, while my heart rebooted itself. I knew we could reassure him that he didn’t need to be afraid of dying, that we were there to protect him, and we’d made a safe home for our family. And we told him these things, but the specific words and the form of his thought rang cruelly in my ears. I felt the sinking dread of knowing that I could not promise him that he wouldn’t dream of such things, that he wouldn’t have nightmares of dying as soon as his head hit pillow.
We can’t know the worlds our children will journey through and experience in the wonderland of their slumber. They aren’t real to anyone except them, and dreams are a deeply personal part of them becoming their own thinking, reasoning and feeling individuals. Everyone dreams alone. But still…
““
I wish I could step between him and his fears, clench a lightsaber to life and illuminate the demons of his dreams before quartering them with savage slashes.
I wish I could throw myself after him, over the rocky edge, to catch him up in my arms and, falling together, shout, “IT ISN’T REAL,” despite the wind he can feel whistling past and the ground he can see soaring toward us.
But I can’t.
It isn’t real for me. It’s his dream.
““
Of course, that night we gave him extra-squishy hugs with heaping side orders of surprise tickles and cheek-fart kisses, and we probably read to him a lot longer than usual, and maybe we even talked softly of pleasant and delightful things with the hopes that he’d enter his sleepscape with something bright still in his mind, but still… we sent him off into his sleep on his own, as it always has to be for any parent, and readied ourselves for late-night hugs and shushes should they be needed.
We know nightmares can’t truly hurt our kids, but as their caretakers and guardians the sense of powerlessness can still gnaw at us when they’re sobbing and trembling, nestled in the warm sanctuary of our arms.
