Article Source: The Positive Observer

Written by - Tyson Davis - October 2008

"In only a few months, I will observe the one year anniversary of my seven-year-old son’s death.  He was injured at one-year-old and lived in a persistent vegetative state for the next six years of our lives.  My wife cared for him at home, and I worked during the day.  Over these last seven years, I continued to feel something was missing in my life…something more than my son, although he was still the greatest loss, but there was something that had changed that I could never pinpoint.  On a related subject, I was recently reunited with an old friend who I haven’t been in contact with for more than a decade.  She’s the one who reminded me that no matter the loss, dreams do live on, and by doing this, she brought me clarity and helped me find that missing piece to the puzzle that I confusingly couldn’t find.  It was the dream.  For those seven years, I lost sight of the dreams that I once had…I lost sight of a future.

A man who once stopped dreaming himself, C.S. Lewis said, “You are never too old to…dream a new dream.”  And while I’m much younger than Lewis was, he shows us that the dream can always go on…the ability to dream never dies.  And I actually see it now.  The future is still there, regardless of the pain and the tragedy, even when we block it out.  After all, just because you can’t see it…that of course doesn’t mean that it isn’t there.  But we lose that sense, don’t we, when we want to.  It’s almost a coping mechanism when you’re in a situation where the future is bleak.  Future becomes a source of contention in your life.  So it is being able to see past the pain and darkness that is so difficult when you are in the storm.  But this is when it is most important to be able to see a future…a future vastly different than the bleak, endless, dark cave you find yourself in for the moment.  And it is only when you recognize what you are doing…blocking out a bright future that exists no matter how dark and long and winding the cave…it is only then when you can begin to dream again and step back in to the land of tomorrow.

Flavia Weedn, noted greeting card illustrator and author, wrote that “If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.”  My friend who I spoke of…the friend I had long since lost touch with…she picked up my son’s name out of those broken pieces, she gave her own son the name on that broken puzzle piece, and she found a way to make it fit back in to the unsolved puzzle that is the scheme of life.  She began the dream again, for me, by allowing my boy’s name to live on through her own child, and thus the dream carried on, too.  So the dreaming goes on…it never stops.  It’s dreams that really never die…and even when you stop dreaming yourself, other’s pick up your pain when you can’t, and they dream for you.

A month or so ago, I started dreaming of a future again, but it wasn’t until my friend contacted me to tell me of she and her husband’s decision to name their child after mine that I realized I had started my own dreaming process once again.  It was when I emotionalized the fact that the dreams I once had for my child would live on through her boy...it was then when the clarity set in.  This was when I realized what had changed in my life in these last few weeks.  I inadvertently began the dreaming process again…but didn’t realize it until I was shocked back in to it by her selfless news.

But what about the physical effects?  When my son was injured, something had to give, and thankfully I stayed sane.  But as for my body, it stepped in and took the hit.  But in the last couple of months, my blood pressure has gone from high to normal, my weight has dropped by 30 pounds (a much needed drop from the 60 I gained after my son was injured), I will begin to train for my first half marathon next week, and I am sleeping through the night, without the help of medication, for the first time in years.  So, while dreaming of a brighter tomorrow can’t necessarily heal the world, it can help heal you, and it will certainly give hope in hopeless situations.  So it can’t hurt.  It has certainly helped me.  And as the great critic and philosopher Aristotle wrote, “Hope is a waking dream.”  So wake up...and dream."