A different Dylan dream

Last night I had a dream about Dylan and it was unlike any dream I had had before. In this dream, Dylan was alive again and he was chatting to the rest of the family about something, I can't remember what exactly. At one point my mum had a book that turned out to be a collection of all the books we had made as children. It was all the stories we had written in primary school, one after another, covering about a decade of our lives. I wanted to read what my brother and sisters had written, but of course I couldn't see any detail- I don't know what they wrote in real life, and I only recognised glimpses of what I made myself. Anyway, that seemed to be an important part of the dream, the idea that deep in my past there are things that I'll never get back. In this dream my mum and my older sister were also in the same room and talking to each other, or at least not avoiding each other. They're not on speaking terms in real life (for whatever reason, I've lost since given up trying to work out why or how to fix things between them.) Either two things had happened- Dylan had come back and that was enough to make us all come together, or I had actually gone back in time in this dream to when were still a single family instead of different individuals.

What was different about this dream was that for once I was happy that Dylan was around again. Previously when I had dreams about Dylan being alive again it's always been very disturbing to me, because I know someone died and someone was cremated. When it turns out to be a different person that this happened it suddenly becomes very, very disturbing. Why did my family choose to cremate a stranger instead of burying them? Why choose the one method the completely destroys all evidence of who that person was? Why was I the only member of the family that never saw Dylan's body? There are good reasons behind all these choices we made, and many of them are mundane. For me, I'd rather not have a grave to visit because I'd very rarely, if ever, visit it. I'd rather carry the grief with me as part of me, than have it be something I can "visit". There also seems something very conventional and traditional about burial. By going with with the slightly less conventional and more modern option we said that Dylan was special to us and relevant. I never got to see Dylan's body because it was height of summer and I visited Crewe at least twice- once when it was too soon to see the body and once when it was too late. If I had traveled on a different day I might have seen his body.

But somewhere in the back of my mind is the possibility that maybe he didn't really die. In most of my dreams this possibility is so sinister that I don't even want to consider it. In this dream I accepted that he was alive and I enjoyed his company. It was part way through the dream that I realised the problem, and I wanted to talk to Dylan about it, but for various reasons I never got the chance. (The dream moved on to a standard "I'm back at school, or maybe university, I'm running late, have no idea of where to go or what to do" etc) As I thought about it I remembered that one of the contributing factors to Dylan's suicide was that he had lost a lot of money, was could have been deep in debt. Disappearing for a few years seemed like a sensible way to solve that problem, but it still meant putting me and the rest of the family through the process of bereavement. So I wanted to talk to Dylan about that as well, but again I didn't get the chance. In my head I'd created the possibility that Dylan was still alive and even justified it to myself. I don't even know where to begin finding out what that means. Maybe it means nothing.

It's probably worth pointing out that recently I took part in a stand up comedy act, and one of the jokes, in fact the biggest joke of my set, revolved around the wrong cat being cremated. At one point the character in the joke (actually my mum, as this is based on a true story) finds out that she cremated the wrong cat and she's overjoyed to find her cat still alive and well. At the time it was just a funny joke that went down well with the audience. Looking back, I can't really tell what to make of it. Was that some idea that was in the back of my mind that I wanted to explore? Or did the joke leave something for my mind to wrestle with in the form of a dream? Or was it just a coincidence? I have no idea, but whatever the case is, it is a bit chilling to look back at that joke and compare it to the dream I had.

A walk in the woods

Today I decided to go for a walk in the woods.  It's the fourth of July and that means a lot of different things to different people.  For me it's the day I found out that my brother, Dylan, died.  It wasn't the day Dylan died though.  He had decided to hang himself and he died three days earlier.   It was also the first day of my new job, after finishing my degree.  It was a watershed in my life and even though it happened nine years ago I still a day off from the rest of my life every year to myself space to grieve, to look at the past, and think about the future.

I've been living without Dylan for nine years now.  If I'm lucky I'll be around for another fifty years.  Each year that passes gets easier, but it's still daunting to look ahead at all that time in front of me, to try to find some kind of plan and find an identity for myself.  This is something that doesn't get talked about much.  When you lose someone close you lose a part of yourself and when you lose a sibling you lose not just a strong connection to your past, but a connection to your future.  You lose a sense of security and permanence.  It affects the other people who were close as well, so my immediate family, which was already in the process of falling apart, collapsed forever.  I've always wanted to be independent and strong enough to find my own way through life, but it's terrifying when it's forced upon you.  My reaction to the grief was to leave the country for a few years and give myself distance from everything back home.  This helped a lot and by doing this I also demonstrated to myself that I can survive alone and that ultimately I don't need someone by my side.  The pain of the loss has faded, and so has the sense of injustice.  I try not to be self-indulgent with the grief, but there are times when it is very cathartic to say to myself that it's not fair to have to lose Dylan.  Thankfully those moments have become more and more rare as time passes.  These days I'm mostly concerned about where the decisions I've made in the light of all this have left me.

Since 2006 I've chosen to move from place to place and follow the physics experiments of the day (I wouldn't say I followed a career, that's the wrong way to think about it) and traveled to new places in the process.  It's been a very formative collection of experiences for me and helped me to grow a lot.  There are still things I need to improve, but I am generally a better informed, more tolerant, more resilient, more experienced person than I would have been if I had chosen to stay in the UK.  In a way, the loss of Dylan is one of the best things that ever happened to me, because it taught me that I can succeed in spite of the pain, and that life is too short to spend all day indoors in front of a textbook.  (Life is also too short to never do those things.  Recently I had some free time so I opened up a maths book for the pure pleasure of learning something new.)

In the course of this travel I've gone to great lengths to find time for myself.  I have a habit of letting work take over my life, but when I make the effort to block out enough time for other activities I find that I get a rush of old memories.  Memories from my childhood that I hadn't even realised I'd forgotten about.  The holidays we went on in North Wales, how Dylan and I would spend hours playing with Lego (only for Dylan to find it more fun to destroy what we'd created) and the stupid word games we'd play when we were lying in our bunk beds avoiding sleep.  (When we were about 10 and 12 years old we used to listen to a radio show called the Late Night Funster Show that was broadcast from 10:00pm to 1:00am.  That was the start of my lifelong problem with insomnia.)  We also found that we could tune our radio to pick up police radio transmissions.  Occasionally they would announce that it was illegal to listen in, but once I realised it was impossible for them to work out if we were listening or not I was fascinated.  Dylan used to love making his own radio shows as well, and I keep hoping that maybe one day we'll find the old cassettes we made and be able to play them back.  I won't be able to relive those moments with Dylan again, of course, but it would be nice to hear them.  All I remember was his impression of Mr Miyagi from The Karate Kid.  I would love to be able to show Dylan the videos I'd made about the LHC, and ask him if he ever thought the radio show we made as kids would lead to something like that.

Well I wrote this post during a pit stop to charge my phone and get something to eat.  I'll return to walking through the woods, thinking things over and working out if I'm brave enough to keep going for another year without falling apart.  The answer will be yes, of course, but the next question is "How?", and there's no simple answer to that.  It used to be the case that traveling the world and working as a scientist was enough to keep me motivated, but these days I find myself wanting to be more grounded, consider a long term relationship, and investigate other professions.  For the past week I've felt an emptiness growing inside of me, in anticipation of this day off.  It's not just grief over the loss of Dylan, it's also grief over the loss of something that once brought me so much joy that it consumed my entire life for a few years.  At least I can do something about that though, and find the strength and motivation to keep on going into the unknown.

Dreams of Dylan

I've had some trouble sleeping lately, and there are a few reasons for that (staying up to chat to people about things like their theses, talks they have to give, and having jumbled up my sleep cycle last week with a night shift.)  However the main reason that I'm still having trouble sleeping is that I dreamt of Dylan again on Monday.

Another night so late it turns into morning again.

This isn't new, I've dreamt about him many times before.  The dreams would always be the same.  Dylan would turn up somewhere and I'd usually be one of the first people to realise he wasn't dead after all.  Then I'd get a terrible feeling that something was deeply wrong.  Dylan's dead.  I saw the coffin.  We cremated his body.  If he's still alive then that means that we burned someone else.  There was nothing in me, even in my dreams, that thought it would be a good idea to bring Dylan back to life.

I'd heard that it's natural to dream of the dead, and that it's asign that your brain is adjusting to the idea and accepting it.  So I don't really think anything of these dreams, I just make a note of them and move on.  I used to keep track of the dreams of him, but stopped after a while.  (From what I remember there was only one dream that I didn't write down, so let's write it down here.  For some reason I was at the Brunel campus and Dylan showed up.  I told him he shouldn't be there and then we went outside where there were some washing machines and inside one of them was an award for something.)

Monday's dream was different though.  For the first time, Dylan appeared in my dream, alive and well, and it took me a few seconds to realise that quite a few years had passed since he "died".  This time I was happy to see him.  He told me that he had faked his death and that he was ready to come back to us.  This was the first time I'd dreamt about him and felt good about it.  I'd love to have him back.  All the pain and anger associated with the grief would be forgiven and he'd be welcomed back.  This time, even though it no different to what happened before, it was a relief to see him.

Of course I woke and realised that reality is different, and that I'll never see Dylan again.  This didn't make me sad, and in a way it amused to have this dream.  It's as if I've moved on into complete acceptance of the situation, but somewhere, in the deep recesses of my mind, part of my brain hasn't quite realised this yet.  If that was the end of the story it would have been fine, but unfortunately it's not.  Every night since then I've had problems getting to sleep, waking up about an hour after drifting off with what feels like an adrenaline rush, and then struggling to get back to sleep.  I wake up later than usual feeling more tired than normal and the cycle repeats.  It's made me "late" for work all week (not that this matters too much in this job) so as it's starting to impact on the rest of my life it's time to get it off my chest.

The problems with sleep patterns are not new to me, and for a long time when I lived in California I felt much the same way.  Today has been a bad day so far.  My whole body feels sad in a way that's hard to explain.  I feel like I want to take a nap, but I'm not tired (and in the past I've tried taking a nap like this, it doesn't help.)  I feel this tension within me like I want to cry, but that's not quite what I need either.  It's as if my body is caught mid-sigh all day and if I can just find what I need to do to release that tension I'll be okay.  Today is an unusually sunny day, which doesn't help.  It feels like I'm in California again, isolated, with enough time on my hands to ponder my feelings in a lot of depth.  It turns out the only thing that will make this better is time.  I won't let it grind me down, I'll smile through it all and in a couple of days time it'll pass.

I still miss Dylan from time to time, and that's okay.  The bad days are getting rarer, but they do come back every now and then.  I've had enough practice to know how to get through this, so I'll be fine today, I'll be fine tomorrow and I'll be fine until whenever this passes.  In fact, I probably won't even notice when it does.

Sunset? Sunrise

There are many bereavement support groups out there and for some reason many of them like to include a setting sun in their logos. For me the setting of the sun is not the difficult part. The rising of the sun the next day is where things get difficult. Finding the strength to get through the day is draining. I tried to put on a brave face all week, and managed to make it to the weekend. But today I was around friends, and I was mopey, and I don't think they minded. I don't know if any of them know about Dylan's death, let alone when it was. Perhaps I should have told them. Tomorrow is another day. I hope I'm ready for it by then.

Another story

One of my close friends recently lost his father. I sent him a short message which I wish I had received when I heard about Dylan's death. What helped most was that people said they were thinking about me, even if they had nothing else to say and felt helpless. I felt helpless too. But at least I didn't feel alone. Here is what I sent:

You're in my thoughts and if you ever want to talk about it, now or in the future, you know where I am. Send my love and thoughts on to the rest of your family. It'll take time, and things will get worse before they get better, but they will get better. Until then you know what to do- give yourself time, give yourself space, talk it over with people, and one day you won't need to talk about it anymore.

For me, the part that was at the same time the most reassuring and the most terrifying was that I knew what to do, keep talking. Knowing that eventually it would change, but at the same time feeling that it would never get better, and knowing that things would never ever be the same as they were was what kept me awake at night. It still does sometimes.

I still take time to be alone and appreciate the solitude.

One day I woke up and it was suddenly easy to be optimistic again. I wasn't happy, it still hurt to get through the day, but at least I had hope again. Every day since then has been better. From time to time I still think about Dylan and the loss (today is one of those days) but they're getting rarer.

Music to grieve to

I've listened to a lot of music in the grieving process, and Kathleen Ferrier has been by far the most moving. It's warm, comforting, heart breaking and most of all it's dignified. All grief should be this beautiful. It may be painful, but with Kathleen it feels like it has purpose.



I think it helps that my mum used to listen to this when I was young (she probably still listens to it0 so it gives me a connection not only to my childhood and Dylan, but also to my mum.

Everybody Hurts

It's been a rough few weeks and finding alone time has been difficult. I took some comfort in physics, immersing myself in my job. Since Dylan died, my physics career has given me a wonderful way to fill the time, explore the world and enjoy my own company again. But then I heard Everybody Hurts by REM, and it brought back a lot of painful memories. It's a song I've known for about as long as I can remember, and I loved it long before Dylan's death (everyone loves it, of course.) We played it at his funeral, and that made it doubly painful and doubly healing to listen to. He must have felt so alone and so helpless if he couldn't see a reason to go on living. And after he killed himself, we were all left alone together.

We all lost Dylan, but we had to deal with that loss alone, because we can't grieve for each other. Hearing this song brought back the memories of when Dylan was still alive, shortly after he died, and the years since. It's not a coincidence that I've become more insular, more guarded and more transient since losing Dylan. I don't think anyone can fill the void that Dylan's absence has left. Nothing can undo the years of hurt and the slow process of putting my life back together. I had a lot of help from a lot of people and I found many of my best friendships while I was grieving, often keep hold of them because of the grief. (When you find someone who's willing to hear you talk about bereavement one day and go for a picnic with you the next, or even from one hour to the next, you don't let go of them easily.) But even so, there has been nobody who has been at my side the whole time. I've had to find my own path, and I picked a particularly tough one. It gave me strength, hope and confidence to keep going. Having lived through all that I doubt I'll be able to ever fully commit to a relationship or be fully open with another person. I'll always find it easier to withdraw into myself, and find it harder to think that anything else has any permanence. It's as if all the things that have shaped me have already come and gone, and I was the only one to see them happen. It's almost pointless to get an impression of someone's grief and its aftermath. It's not enough to be able to fully understand what someone has been through and why they are who they are.

Anyway, here's the song, for all its power and its many interpretations. It's been there for me many times and this won't be the last time it's helped me sum up the sense of loss and then find strength.