What Dreams May Come

My dream this morning had me trying desperately to save “my little girl” Sophia from death. It was very distressing and when I woke up I knew I had failed, and every time i fell back into a doze I went back into this dream and tried desperately and then failed to save her.

My “daughter” (God-daughter?) Sophia was originally about 3 in my dream. Then I was told that in fact she was 14, and that I had been gone for 13 years, and suddenly she was a long-legged young scrawny teenager, reminding me of my niece Clara (who is only 7.) Sophia was extremely attached to me, spending as much time as possible physically attached to me.

Some disease had rendered much of the population into little more than zombies, barely alive and physically dead except for some form of consciousness allowing them to move. If they were given a particular thing to drink (a yellow-green-tinged thick liquid, almost like car oil fresh from the container) with some kind of berries in it, it would bring them back to good health for a short time; but within two weeks they would be almost dead again, barely shuffling around and unable to care for themselves. The liquid could only be ingested every two weeks without causing permanent, irreversible death. This death would not be the peaceful slumber of the dead, but the living pain-filled death of the zombie, never-ending and mindless. I was completely unprepared for it, but for everyone else it was just part of how they lived life. I spent a lot of time being scared.

I didn’t know Sophia was also a victim of this disease until I had been there a little over a week and she began to visibly tire and lose her energy, no longer able to wrap herself around me crying “Sandi” with joy. When I realized she too was ill and needed this medicinal drink I panicked. I didn’t know it couldn’t be taken more frequently. I told her that I wanted her to take a smaller dose earlier than normal so that she wouldn’t have to go through the shutting down of her body, and asked her if she could do that. She wanted to please me and didn’t really understand the consequences I suppose, and said yes, we could try that.

When I gave her the drink it burned her throat and she began to have trouble breathing. I held her tightly trying to get some water into her to dilute it and ease her pain. It didn’t help. I held her in my arms as she was dying and in the midst of screaming “No! No! Sophia! Sophia! Somebody help me! Please! Sophia! Oh God, Sophia! No! God, help me!!!”, I woke up. Then fell back to sleep to find myself holding her and screaming, and woke up. And again. And again.

It was horrible. After about 5 rounds of that, I began telling my husband that I couldn’t save her, that I didn’t want to go back, that he couldn’t let me go back. He couldn’t hear what I was saying, but tried to comfort me anyway, waking me back up when he heard me starting to fall asleep again. It’s been on my mind all day.