I had a dream that Grant came back, like came back right now. I dreamed that he came back to the life I have now.  In the dream he hadn’t been dead but it was more like a pause for him.   

He’d still had his accident in the dream. He had spent these last years apart from us doing rehabilitation on his own.  I couldn’t understand it though.  My thought was, ‘How could he leave us thinking he was dead when this whole time, he was alive; not well, but alive?’ 

I was even more angry with him at first than I had been for him being dead.  I couldn’t understand why he’d abandon us because he was hurt. Nor how he could go through all that healing alone without us.  

In the dream I learned that he didn’t remember what happened.  He didn’t even know how long it had been.  He was just as he was before, as if he’d never been hurt.  He knew time had passed, but he didn’t know how long.  

He knew that he’d been hurt and healed, but he didn’t know what had happened.  I did.  I knew exactly how long it had been.  I knew exactly what had happened.  Our life without him is completely different than it was with him.

How did he find us I wondered?  He didn’t even know where we lived now.   He had gone to my parents house apparently.  Somehow in the dream, we were there in our back yard and he came around back and found us outside.  

It was a real shock to see him.  I went into physical shock.  What was happening!?  Was I dead?!  My whole body went numb and yet, I was still breathing.  The feelings there were more intense than anything I’ve ever had in this life I’m living now.  

For this reunion, there were intermediaries there.  Kind of like heavenly beings that were there to help.  They knew how emotionally intense this would be for all of us.  They knew it would be very intense for me to come to the understanding that he wasn’t dead.

There would have to be spiritual beings there I mean... It was needed so that I could comprehend the life in death and the death in the life coming back.  I felt what was happening so intensely.  

I was filled with dismay, fear, and shock. I had so many layers of emotion, I couldn’t unpack it all right there and then, I couldn’t even feel all the feelings. I felt all the things I felt before but in a different way now. 

It was actually the exact opposite of when those feelings permeated every aspect of my life almost 4 years ago when he died.  But now, he was back from the dead and the truth was; that death had never happened.  It was another level of trauma.  

I was so glad there were angel-like people there to help.  Then Grant said to me, ‘It’s ok, cause we’ll be together forever.’  The angel said to us both,  ‘Well, only if she wants to, and she said she doesn’t want to be with you anymore.’

The impact of his decision to leave had a huge impact on me.  I first thought it was his decision to leave because of death.  But now I’m finding out that it was his decision to leave and it wasn’t because of death, it was because he actually did decide to be gone. 

I had already decided it was bad enough that he died.  There was a tiny bit of consolation that there was nothing either of us could do about it.  Now I find that there was, and he didn’t do it.  

He didn’t choose me. He left to cut me out of his experience and let me do it all alone so he could be alone.  The look on his face when the angel spoke for me, explaining that I no longer wanted to be with him forever.  That look was surprising and deeply hurt.  

I only saw that look on his face once while he was living.   I recognized it immediately and remembered that moment in life that brought it to his face.  I felt that sadness again. Yet after all this, how could he even comprehend who I am.

How could he understand what I’ve been through. And how could it be that things would be just as they were before?  They can’t.  Yet, the look of surprise on his face surprised me.  It was like nothing had changed for him when everything had for me. 

I couldn’t wrap my head or heart around it all. Can I change?  Can I go back to this man who’s been gone for so long?  Can we be a family again?  Can I love him still or again? Even after all this, I feel like I would choose him again.  Everytime.  

As I looked at him, I could barely comprehend that I could see him again; touch him again, hear him and feel him.  Everything I’ve wanted all this time, and it’s right before me.  It’s like I’m breaking all over again.  

The feeling of him being alive, the thing that’s the truth.  It is not true every time I wake up.  The longing I felt to try, to talk to him, to feel what it would feel like to go back to that life… it was right here before me now it seemed. 

Then I woke up.  I felt thrust into the reality that really is here in the physical world, only to wake up to the shock of it all, all over again.  What I thought was being undone, was nothing but my brain sending me a vision. 

It was like a vision of the things I’ve imagined will absolutely never be.  They were coming to tease me in a way that broke my heart again just for a moment. So I could feel a new pain just for a moment, that I didn’t know would be part of this loss again.  

I immediately realized that the dream wasn’t so.  As I was breathing hard, I laid in my bed.  My eyes open and settled into the life I do know, the one I always wake up to.  The life that I wake up to where he’s gone.

It's the deep hurt reality comes with, waking up each day over and over again.  It was only a dream.  After the hurt of the loss in a dream that couldn't be, I felt a sense of relief.  I didn’t have to find out if we could be together again.  

I didn’t have to know if I could or couldn’t go back or if we would succeed or fail. Failing all over again, would have been a heartbreak after such a loss. It would have been more of a heartbreak than never losing him in the first place.    

I don’t have to know, there’s no possibility of that; so there’s no reason to grieve over losing him again, but this time with him here.  That’s the relief. A relief that I didn’t get lost in the what if’s because of the what is.

This is the safety of my current reality. My stability is grounded in this physical truth. This reality that I’ve come to know oh so well now. Even though this reality is that deep sadness of separation, it is sure.