Dreams….

Back when I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, my sister, who was 2 years younger than me, was born with Eisenmenger’s Syndrome. Basically, a hole or holes in her heart that did not completely form with the rest of the walls of the heart in utero. Her oxygen exchange was limited, and growing up, her lips and fingertips were of a purplish color. Her and I were very close, as we grew up on a farm and only had each other to play with. As we grew older, her condition became worse. After her sophomore year of high school, she had to be home schooled, as she could not effectively walk around the campus without passing out from lack of oxygen. She was a fish out of water…

When I was 23 and she was 21, she agreed to go back on the transplant waiting list for yet another set of lungs (she had already had a heart and double lung transplant three years prior). The rejection of the new organs was slowly killing her, ever with all of the modern medicine at the time (1996). Finally, my mom called me up and said that I needed to fly out. It didn’t look good, and my sister was in a medically induced coma to ease her breathing while ona ventilator (she was having a hard time relaxing while intubated).

After a week there, I left a few days early to go back to work (this was before FMLA). Before leaving, I was given a few minutes to say whatever I wanted to say to her, and all I could come up with, was “I love you, and I will see you in Heaven.” Got to the San Jose airport (my sister was atStanford Med Center), only to find my flight was canceled. Got on another flight a few hours later, and made it back to Texas (where I was stationed) around midnight. Couldn’t fall asleep very easily….tossed and turned…watched TV….and after a few hours of it all, finally started to drift off around 0330. I do not know how long I had been asleep, but the next thing I know, I was running down a dark hallway. At the end of that hallway, there was an arched doorway, approx 8 feet high, with a dark shadowy figure waving to me from it. I ran faster and faster to catch up to it….but it was always a far distance ahead, as if I was running in place. That was the only image in the dream, complete darkness and a soft, glowing brightlight eminating from the darkness. It was almost a warm light, nothing scary or threatening about it. Almost inviting and peaceful. I ran faster, yet the human figure kept waving, the hand over the head with the arm outstretched, waving back and forth, as it to say goodbye….

I jerked awake to the sound of my phone ringing. It was my mom from the hospital. While I was on the plane ride home, the doctor’s informed my parents that there was nothing more they could do for my sister, and her transplant was no longer an option. There was nothing more for her.

My mom held her in her arms as she was unhooked from life support. She died at 0310, as I was having that dream of seeing the figure in the bright doorway surrounded by nothing but darkness. Was she subconsciously saying goodbye? I have no idea, but I have never had that dream again, ever, and I can remember it as if it were happening in front of me, still.

I ask my fellow Sect members this: if there is no afterlife (as I am more or less inclined to agree), then what was this dream? Was my mind already trained to the thought of her passing away, so the dream was the next in line for my brain to process? Or was I experiencing something more? For a long time, I never really told anyone about it, as I didn’t want to be ridiculed. But I have a lot of questions about it that I know will never be answered. In the end, after her funeral, it was easier to let her go, as I felt she was in a “better place”, for whatever that was worth.