PARALLEL DREAMS

I don’t know if you have seen the Spanish film “the Orphanage”, it is a drama/horror based on the premise that the closer to our own death we are the closer we become to the dead, whom exist in a parallel world alongside us. In it is a woman who purposefully harms herself just so she can commune with spirits which have passed over. There is a part of me that can believe this, due to some inexplicable things I have witnessed in my own life. I would even extend this to include the process of lucid dreaming – for instance what my mother experienced that morning when her brother John died, & what I experienced with my dog Penny. Scientists will say that it is a “trick of the mind”, perhaps it is. Whether it is brought on by psychological projection or fevered delirium, I don’t know – & maybe we’re not meant to.

As a nurse who has cared for a lot of dying people I have seen some pretty strange things. I thought that today in my Blog I would share a few of these, & out of respect I will preserve their anonymity. Maybe there is some rational explanation, if so I’d like to hear it. I have shared these thoughts with two psychologists & my psychiatrist - one psychologist believed in it & encouraged it, the other more or less avoided the topic altogether. My psychiatrist just listened & fervently scribbled down more notes in my file.