Being Driven- Judy's Dream

Being Driven – May 4, 2004

I’m driving to a cabin in the mountains with my childhood friend, Irene. It’s a 4-5 hour drive and we’re driving at night in Ontario. Irene is the driver. I am in the passenger seat and she is in the trunk. I think it’s strange that she is driving from the trunk and that I can’t see her, but I’m not nervous. I feel safe with her driving.

We are close to Toronto and another 1 or 2 hours from the cabin. I am trying to get Irene’s attention to ask if she is tired and suggest we stop, perhaps stay at my sister’s and then continue the next day, but I can’t see her and she apparently doesn’t hear me as I’m not getting an answer.

Now she’s in the driver’s seat but falling asleep. We stop at my cousin Ally’s to call my sister. Her phone has a call box attached to it that must be fed money in advance of the call. When I get through to my sister (older sister) she tells me she and her husband just returned from Florida and there are parcels and luggage everywhere, but if we can clear a space we are welcome to stay. I tell her I’m with Irene who she knows is my childhood friend. But when I arrive at my sister’s home I am actually with a different friend and I feel foolish. How do I explain that I confused Glenda with Irene?
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Making sense of this dream:

I am on a journey, and interestingly a journey to the mountains, tho’ I don’t know of any mountains near Toronto. But Toronto is where I grew up and this dream has a lot to do with family baggage (going back to childhood, hence my childhood friend), and in times of crisis, family baggage has, for most of us, a way of becoming very obvious. My son, Neil, died in the Rocky Mountains and so in some way I am trying to journey to him.

I am not in the driver’s seat – ie: I am not following my own path. I am being driven by an invisible driver who I believe is really my dead son, Neil. It is certainly true that since his death, my only passions have been related to ensuring that he is remembered and some would say that I have been ‘driven’. It makes sense to me then that the focus of my driven-ness is Neil and it is with him or to him that I journey. I am not struggling with who the driver is in this in the dream. I accept that’s where I am and where I need to be. My struggle is more with speaking and being heard in the real world.

There’s a lot in the dream about baggage and communication difficulties – the baggage at my sister’s, having to pay to speak on the phone. There have always been communication problems in my family of origin and a price to be paid for speaking up. Now, since Neil’s death, nobody speaks of him unless I bring him up. They don’t call me on the anniversary of his death or on his birthday like my wonderful, loving friends do. So it feels like in the dream, the baggage/luggage is a barrier to communication.

There is another thing about boxes/containers that comes to mind. These have come up in many of my dreams since Neil’s death (one in particular about a precious chest). The last time I saw Neil he was contained in a box, so boxes sometimes have a very ominous connotation to me, and sometimes (as in the precious chest dream) they have a feeling of great beauty and attraction. In “The Unknown Driver” dream of Rich’s, the “huge, box shaped warehouses that sit glistening white by the bay” were an echo of images in many of my dreams. However, in this dream, they seem to be more about barriers.

In the end, I’m with Glenda, not Irene. Glenda is a friend in the last 20 years of my life. I’m back in the present, standing in my sister’s house, with my childhood baggage of feeling not understood, my sister’s baggage piled up around the living room, creating a barrier. And I think how can we ever communicate if I keep getting it wrong? Here’s where the dream reminds me that I am both of these people – the child in relation to my older, only, sibling, and the adult that feels alone in my journey.