Jul 03 2008
Losing One’s Children
I dreamed last night that I was walking through a crowded sort of place–rather like an amusement park–and somehow I was a bit far from my two children. Suddenly, a big man scooped up my son and started running away with him. I screamed, grabbed my daughter, gave her quickly to a woman with children (the most trustworthy person I could find, I suppose), and started RUNNING. I ran fast, too, and caught up with the creep. I pulled him around (something I would never be able to do in real life, most likely), and told him I’d chew him apart bite by bite if he didn’t let my boy go.
And the man stabbed me. He said something like, “You were the one I wanted to get to, anyway,” and stabbed me. The dream ended with me lying on a stretcher, the knife still in my gut, most likely dying. And I was shaking as I woke up, but not for myself. I almost felt elated, for in the dream I’d saved my son, and I didn’t care if my life was the exchange I made for it. But then my mind returned to the other parts of it, and my fear returned. How could I ever prevent someone from stealing my boy? He’s so small and light. What if that woman with the kids was evil, too, and she hurt my girl? What if, right now, at 4:30 in the morning, somebody is taking my sleeping kids right out their window, and I’m stupidly lying here, thinking about a dream.
I cannot tell you the fear I feel that I might lose my children. It’s a fear mixed with rage. I used to believe I could never kill anyone (I’m pretty much a vegetarian pacifist, and try to hurt nothing). But once my daughter was born, I knew the rage of a mother bear when her cubs are threatened. Even contemplating someone hurting kids fills me with rage and panic.
When I was pregnant with my son, I kept dreaming my daughter had drowned. I’d find her in the water, facing back up at me, dead. That dream woke me over and over. Some nights I didn’t go back to sleep for three or four hours, so frightened was I of the dream. Now my daughter knows how to swim, and I still watch her like a hawk, a hawk filled with panic that something bad will happen.
I can imagine nothing more horrible than losing one’s child. I pray that will never be my fate.
