It felt very real, like there was nothing out of place I can remember. I just woke up crying. Everything felt like it was moving in real time, there were no time skips, I experienced what would have been around 4 months of events.
In the dream, I was at work when I got a call from my best friend and roommate, and she told me that there was a freak accident and I needed to get home right away. I rushed back, and there I found my mum, my stepdad, my other sibling, and my two roommates. One of my roommates told me that she had gone to the beach with my brother and some of his friends and they all tried to swim but the current was too strong and my brother was too far out and there’s no way he survived it, and that the coastguard was currently looking for him or his body.
We spent days agonising, walking around the coastline, calling hospitals, putting up posters just in case, etc. in the end the coast guard found his body and we had to go and ID him. It was horrific and I’m not gonna get into too much detail about what his body looked like but it was freaky and bloated and disgusting and painful to look at.
We planned the funeral, we buried him, I had to tell people and go through grief and even grief counselling. My long distance boyfriend even flew in. I was struggling to get through every day, I was crying non stop, playing old voice messages and looking at photos. We eventually had to go through his stuff too and I couldn’t throw almost anything out, I ended up keeping all his guitars and clothes even, letting my mum take one guitar and one of his hoodies that she got him.
I struggled with the people around me, especially my family because other than my siblings my relationship with everyone else is quite strained. My friends were doing their best to help me even when I lashed out or I was crying loudly in the middle of the night. My boyfriend stayed for over a month but eventually had to go back to his country but was looking into relocating because of the state I was in.
My mum disappeared and didn’t want to talk to anyone from the grief. I even saw the painful process of my grandma suddenly struggling with a lot of health issues and depression because we lost my grandpa in early January, and I guess losing both of them in the dream really messed her up way too much, to the point where she was literally a husk of a person, refusing to eat and talk and just sitting in a hospital bed.
And I was just doing my best to keep going, despite this unfathomable loss. I was contemplating giving up very often. Everything was painful, every moment at work, every time someone mentioned him, something reminded me of him, every time I tried to play one of the songs he liked to play and doing a horrible job at it. I couldn’t sleep at night and I was eating very little myself. It was the heaviest thing I’ve ever had to experience.
And then, one of those sleepless nights, the pain suddenly “lifted” and I woke up.
I immediately checked my phone for the date and to call my brother, but then realised that it’s an insane thing to do and I’d wake him up and worry him for no reason even though he’s busting his ass studying rn, so I settled for a text and kept crying for a while.
I feel like a changed person, and it wasn’t even real.