Save my husband!

Save my husband!

We are at this strange pool place that seems to be some kind of installment rather than a swimming place, but people are swimming in one of the pools.  There are a series of pools with narrow cement walkways between them.  Somehow, Keith falls into to one of the pools and disappears.  I run to where the people are and scream and scream for help.  They are so slow coming I say over and over and over, please hurry, every second counts.  They don’t hurry, but eventually the come and walk slowly through the pool.  One small obnoxious man finds Keith and gives him CPR and Keith revives.  I am so desperately relived and grateful—I keep thinking the man, even though I don’t like him and want to give him a reward but he goes off with the other people back to the other pool.  Keith is kind of limp and exhausted and his eyes are wrong—he looks as if he is blind or as if his cornea has separated from his eyes or as if there are shining discs inserted.  Or weird contact lenses.  I am gathering our things and Keith disappears.  I don’t know if he walked off or fell back into the pool.  I look in several pools—one of them is opaque and milky.  I wake up in a panic.  Monday, February 13, 2012

+++++++++What does this remind you of?

My good friend Pam’s husband just died this week (last week, 5 days ago) and of course, she is bereaved and terribly lonely and upset.  My good friend Hal recently lost his wife.  Herb was Keith’s age, and Ann even younger.  They both had cancer.  Reminders of mortality.  Anyone could die at any time, but the older you get, the more likely you are to die.  I want to KEEP Keith and myself alive, for as long as reasonably possible.  I am afraid both of suffering and of death itself.  And I have a lot to do. (A lot I want to accomplish!)

Bruce’s cousin David Farnsworth’s daughter Ellen fell out of a boat into a lake and lay at the bottom of a lake for like half an hour and then was revived and was OK—that was 35 years ago or so and she is still alive and well and married and has children—the 40-degree water stopped the brain death.   Thus my shouting, “every second counts” over and over—I wanted to save him and to not have him be damaged.  I wanted him alive and well!

The pools installation was sort of like an old-fashions sewage treatment plant—but the water in most of the pools was clean.  (Perhaps it had once been a sewage treatment plant, but wasn’t full of sewage now.)

I was thinking about what you (Brian) said about how in my dreams, I am always the one who knows what to do and other seems to be stupid or slow.  I do not think that is always true, even in my dreams.  In real life, it is certainly NOT true.  However, there are many times in dreams and in life when other people do not see a need I see or believe in or are slow or stupid or otherwise impeding what seems necessary to me. I observe every day people who are smarter than I, know more than I, are more organized than I am, better writers, better artists, etc.  I do not, in waking life, consider myself the best at anything.  On the other hand, there seems to be a vast crowd of dolts and idiots surging around.  Watching other drivers can frighten one off the road, for example.  Reading things people forward (a bad habit) can make one question the intelligence and sanity of the sender.  (I think some people forward everything they get without a moment’s thought to its value.)  In this dream, when Keith disappeared, I did not know whether he left or had fallen in or what I did NOT know what to do.  (I often do not know what to do.)  In the first part, however, I knew we needed to walk across the pool hand-in-hand to find him, since we couldn’t see to the bottom of the pool.  (These were not regular swimming pools, and were old, and brown rather than blue and the water wasn’t entirely clear—more like pond water, but not sewage. Thus the foot-dragging for location.)

The human chain to locate possible drowning victims was a part of my past, a constant part of my childhood and my children’s childhood.  It always frightened me, especially as a child.  I was also frightened when my kids were little.

Interesting that I have to wonder if my sometimes (often) being in charge of things in dreams is a bad thing, and whether you (Brian) were pointing out a flaw in my personality.  Or is it a good thing?  Or is it just a thing?