Shared Dreaming with the Departed

I recently had the most amazing SHARED dream experience! I dreamed of my deceased father and a few days later discovered that my husband (who rarely remembers his dreams) had also dreamed of my dad and his own parents (who are also deceased) the very same night. The details of his dream and mine were so connected that I am convinced we were all sharing a very real experience.

My dream:

Phone Call from Dad
I pick up the phone to make a call, but there is no dial tone. I hang it up and try again and get a different kind of sound than the normal dial tone, then silence. I try a few more times, getting just a bit of a dial tone which quickly goes silent. On my next try, a recorded voice speaking in French says something about the phone not being equipped for French signals. I say, “English, not French! What’s wrong with this thing?” Suddenly my Dad is on the line, speaking in a raspy, Sling Blade kind of voice, but still recognizable as my Dad. It’s like he’s using a voice he hasn’t used for a long time. “Dad? Is that you, Dad?” We have a sweet conversation, although it seems difficult for him to use words. I ask him what he’s been doing and he says, “Well, I caught me a fish.” He sounds kind of delighted and so am I. I say, “You went fishing, Dad? Was it really beautiful where you fished?” He says, “Well, it was nothing like Tahiti.” Then he tells me I am beautiful and he loves me. His words seem to carry layers and layers of additional meaning. I feel totally loved and supported. I tell him I love him, and then he’s gone.
~~

I was so moved by this, and it was so real. I awoke just saying thank you and I love you over and over again. My Dad is French-Canadian, so French is his first language. It would not be surprising for him to try to communicate in French as the phone call initially began. He loved fishing and his passion was sailing. He and my Mom went to Tahiti for one of their anniversaries and he took hundreds of gorgeous photographs. It was the most memorable trip in his life. The very last conversation I had with him, as he was slowly dying of Alzheimer’s and lay sleeping and unresponsive in his bed, was about Tahiti. I put on one of his Tahitian CDs and told him to imagine the aqua blue seas of Tahiti. I told him he could let go and just sail away. He died early the next morning.

A few days after my dream, something on the TV reminded me of my Dad and I said to my husband, “Oh, I dreamed of my Dad the other night.” He said, with surprise, “I dreamed about your Dad the other night, too. And my Mom and Dad, too.” We quickly determined that our dreams had been on the same night.

My husband’s dream:

Pulling the Boat out of the Lake with a Backhoe
My husband’s Mom is griping that his Dad went to pull the boat out of the lake with the backhoe. He goes to see what his Dad is up to. His Dad says, “I had to pull some old geezer in a sailboat out of the lake.” My husband is surprised to see that the “old geezer” in question is MY Dad!
~~

My husband’s Dad drove a backhoe for a living, grading county roads. The “old geezer” was in a sailboat – my Dad’s boat of choice. My husband’s parents have been gone longer than my Dad. I got the feeling that maybe Dad is just coming into full consciousness of his new surroundings (he’s been gone about a year and a half). He found a lake to sail away on, all right,  but it’s nothing like Tahiti. He maybe got himself into a bit of trouble out there on that new lake, and my husband’s folks are there, helping him out.

The whole experience is just so validating to me that life continues on the “other side.” And that we can communicate with our loved ones who are over there through dreams.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

I would love to hear your own ideas about and experiences of shared dreaming and dreaming with the departed.

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