Her passing is constantly in my dreams.

HI Hope

I'm sorry to see that this post remains unanswered and I apologise  for leaving it so long to come back you.

You  are so right what is normal at a time like this, your normal may not be, say, my normal as we are oh so different in how we handle our emotions.

Grief is a strange emotion and is assumed that everyone will follow the 5 stages but this is not really the case and people are known to jump around the stages and come back to the beginning but what you are saying you've bypassed the denial, the anger, the bargaining and depression stages and arrived at the acceptable stage right at the beginning but you should be prepared for the other stages to kick in at any time. Your grandma appearing in your dreams could mean that she feels your acceptance and is worried that because you've not gone through the first 4 stages she feels that she can't leave you until she knows you are okay before she finally passes over and this could be why you are having the same dream over and over, but I'm no expert and you have to believe in the afterlife to for this to be understood and is a discussion that could go on and on. If I remember correctly it's only about 2 weeks since she lost her battle so it's still early days

However I wonder if this is a question that you could ask of Wendy who is a Macmillan volunteer who answers questions on our (Missing Group) page and see if she can throw any light onto your recurrent dream pattern. Wendy normally replies in about 2 days.

I hope you find an answer soon.

Ian 

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Hi , I am very sorry to hear of your constant dream that's haunting you a lot at the moment and like my good friend has said we all can grief different. Maybe some more expert bereavement support will be of help to you. I have recently realised after talking with a great councillor that I am pretty haunted by a number of things including my friends death which effected me rather more then I actually realised there are times when I have been convinced I have seen him in a shop or on the street and I have almost called out to him to realise he is not there. Our mind absorbs so many thoughts which seem to swirl we try not to deal with them at times or even think we are but once we are asleep our unconscious mind takes over as I was once told your mind is like a box of frogs trying hard to get out, with each worry, thought we don't want to deal with we put it in with the frogs the problem becomes when its full and jumping around desperate for us to open it up and deal with it. Its not easy to deal with these thoughts but we need to one at a time and in our own time. Maybe the constant dream your having is your unconscious mind trying to say you need to allow yourself to deal with these emotional thoughts, one thing I was told about was mindfulness classes some find them very effective, also as Bodach said Wendy our bereavement support expert can help you deal with your individual grief. I think its normal how you feel I have cried for my friend but this was before he died somehow the day before I just knew but I struggle to absorb his death sometimes and find it difficult to cry but it doesn't mean that you have excepted it but maybe your not fully ready, there is no hand book telling us how we should grieve but we all have our own ways its just finding what helps you.

Hi,

Thank you for your kind words, the dreams seem to have stopped now, and we had her funeral last week. I have now gone to the denial stage, I'm fine as long as I am busy, however I stop and then it starts again, like today, I just had a thought of her and it set me off. I thought after the funeral that maybe I would get some closure, and start to slowly move on, not that I will ever forget my Grandma as she will always be with me, even though I can't speak to her, she is with me.

Ultimately I don't feel like I am coping with all of this, and went to see a counsellor the other day, however there is now a 12 week wait for me to get seen again.

I just feel like I'm in limbo, and just existing like everything seems to be crushing down around me, and I simply cannot control this.

Hope x