The Language of the Unconscious
Disturbing fragments of last night’s dream hung around my waking consciousness, heavy like a fog. I recorded the dream, as I had recorded many over the years, noting the theme, mood and symbols. The puns, pictorial language and sense of fun which usually illuminated situations and alleviated seriousness with its pin-sharp sense of humour, were not helping me to relate this dream to my waking life at all.
I thought about discussing it at the dream-group the following week, but something in me resisted. I didn’t want to know what this meant.
Here is the dream which I found so disturbing at a time in my life when everything was going well, and I was happy, healthy and content. I always record dreams in the present tense, putting myself back in the moment.
I am in the garden of my mother’s house, where I grew up, and where she still lives. It’s a warm sunny day, and mum and my husband and children are enjoying the garden. I look up into a clear blue sky, where a plane is flying high. As I watch its progress across the sky, I can see that something is wrong with it. I try to tell everyone, but they look up and can’t see a problem, they dismiss my fears. Those fears are all too soon realised, as we watch the stricken aircraft struggle to stay in the air, realising that all the lives aboard are about to be lost.
The plane crashes on the church where I was christened, with an awful sound and a sickening cloud of smoke. In this moment, I realise that my job is to be the first at the scene, clearing up the carnage. The feeling of responsibility and dread is leaden. At the scene, in a high-visibility jacket and chatting at a coffee-stall is my deceased father, looking remarkably chipper and ready for action. When I express my surprise at seeing him, and ask why he is there, he looks directly into my face, with an expression I haven’t seen since my childhood.
“I’ve come back to lend you a hand. You’d be on your own with all of this otherwise.”
It was the awful feeling that this dream left me with which made it stand out from any other dream I’ve had. It wasn’t like a nightmare which fades with the dawn, this was something worse, a waking nightmare. I’d always enjoyed my dreams, and looked forward to sleep because of them. I had always been able to relate my dreams to events or associations from the previous day. I tried to block the heavy feeling out, but within a week, I had similar dream, again watching a plane crash, again feeling the weight of responsibility for the clearing-up operation. I wrote them all in my dream diary, but resisted giving them anything but a cursory interpretation, as a deeper part of my conscious knew that I wouldn’t like the result.
Later comparisons with my appointments diary revealed that on the first day of this six-month series of plane crash dreams, my mother had visited the doctor’s, troubled by a cough. Unusually for her, she was bothered by the cough all winter, finally seeing a specialist in late spring.
Mum was a healthy person, a non-smoker with a good diet, I had no reason to worry about her, and I was genuinely unconcerned about her health. I had trained as a nurse, I was confident that I would know if something was badly amiss. Here is my dream from the night before her visit to the specialist. I had even forgotten, consciously, that she had the appointment.
I am standing on the steep bank of the park where my Mum pushed me on swings as a toddler, and Dad enjoyed a game of cricket. Mum’s house can be seen in the distance. The sky is a terrible black and a gale tears at the branches of the lovely old trees. I had thought I was alone, but the bank is populated by family and acquaintances, some of whom are supposed to be dead. I wonder what awful event could have bought them here, and the answer comes in the form of another stricken aircraft, red with the flames which will be its nemesis, screaming across the sky. I cry out, and all eyes are on me, they are wondering if I’m prepared for the crash. I wonder if I am, too.
When the truth of Mum’s terminal condition came out the next day, amidst my genuine shock, I was left reeling at how I could have missed all those clues. My overriding emotions were shock and sorrow, however, on some deep level, I felt prepared.
I had to break the news of her illness and prognosis to her neighbours as she was admitted to hospital straightaway. Talking to her upset friend about it I mentioned the dreams that I had been having, and her eyes widened.
“Your father always said that he and your mother would die together in a plane crash,” she said. It was my turn to look surprised!
The plane dreams didn’t stop there. That very night a large, shiny old fashioned and slightly battered looking plane flew very low in a sunny sky. The passengers waved, and smiled. It lumbered off on its way into the blue, for the moment at least, it was untroubled, and I felt the relief that understanding brings. I looked at the plane crash dreams of the past six months and how they had allowed me to try on uncomfortable emotions and get used to them before they were inevitable. The dreams showed me the support that was around me.
We knew her condition was terminal, and she and I enjoyed her last six months doing things together untroubled by life’s trivia. When her time came, of course my dreams warned me, and helped me to be ready.
I do not believe that these dreams were precognitive in any paranormal sense, they simply expressed something my subconscious knew, but which was not understood on a conscious level. The clues were there in my daily life, but I was either too busy with three small children to pick them up, or I didn’t want to face awful possibilities.
I use those dreams to illustrate the workings of the dreaming mind because the images powerfully evoke the upset and tragedy that unfolded, but there are many happier examples to draw on as well.
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