Being a typical millennial, I usually start my morning scrolling through social media, before reading the electronic newspaper while commuting to work.
While scrolling through Instagram, I came across this post.
And I could relate to this post, the relationship I had with my sister was what people would call #sistergoals. In my family, there was only my sister and I, and if I wanted to gossip about my parents I could not gossip to them, I could only gossip to my sister. As I think back, perhaps that was the reason I wasn’t ready for her death then. I wasn’t ready till the day that she kind of nagged at me and told me that whether I liked it or not, I had to accept her death.
Previously I wrote about how I wish I had one more day with my sister, and I realised after writing the post, what if all I wanted was to be able to talk to my sister, if there was a way for us to talk to the dead, be it a loved one or a pet that passed away. Wouldn’t that be great? For some time, I would send text messages to her via Telegram even after her death. But after we cancelled her phone line and someone took over, I could no longer send messages.
For the past 5 years I have been living with grief but deep down I know that life is different without my sister. Throughout the past 5 years, I dreamt about my sister numerous times, and the very first time that I dreamt of my sister was on the way to Mandai crematorium to collect her ashes. I used to wake up crying each time I dreamt of her because I would always ask “Why was it a dream, if only it happened in real life” But over the years, I started ‘treasure’ the times that I would dream about her, and I would wake up laughing or smiling as I recall the dream that I had. Every time, I dreamt about my sister, the dreams were rather vivid and I would wake up remembering exactly what the dreams were about.
I thought about it for a very long and wondered what if dreams were considered a platform for the living to connect with the dead. All of us had a loved one who passed away and somehow yearned for the day that they would appear in our dreams.
Somehow or rather, dreaming about our loved ones helps to calm our grieving nerves and it helps us to recall the moments spent together cause the conversations we had during the dreams always seem so real.
Recently, on two separate occasions, I dreamt of my sister. In both dreams, she was busy pacing up and down nonstop In the first dream, I remembered asking her what was she doing and she said. “I am busy and I need to prepare and settle stuff” The second dream seemed to be related cause she was still pacing up and down and I asked “Huh you still haven’t finished preparing” She replied, “There is a lot of things to do and aiya you won’t understand”
With that the dream ended and I woke up realising that sometimes dreams don’t make sense, but perhaps in another dimension, my sister was busy hustling.
Dreams may or may not make sense to us, or it may be our loved ones trying to pass a message to us on what might happen in the future. We won’t get an answer to these questions, perhaps till we die.
Until then, I still hold on to the belief that we dream of our loved ones who had gone before us because of the love we shared, and the memories we shared and without love, there won’t be grief.
May we continue to dream of our loved ones this festive season! May they be celebrating with us wherever they are.
Live Boldy
