Neil's Visit- Judy's Dream

The Visit: July 5, 2002

I am following my son, Neil, into an unknown country. He stops at the border and explains that he is going into the country to find his brother who is missing. The border guards look at his papers and let him through. I am invisible. There is no sense of portent about this although I understand that Scott is missing somewhere in this unknown terrain that feels like somewhere in the Middle East. I feel comforted that Neil is still concerned for his brother, even tho’ Neil is now dead.

I follow him through narrow, winding, cobbled streets, outdoor markets, crowded squares. He seems to know that I am there behind him but he is on a mission. He seems confident.

Eventually we leave the village behind and are on a narrow dirt path/trail. He stops to have his lunch. He sits on one side of the path and opens his lunch. I sit facing him on the other side of the path. He looks at me and smiles. His whole being seems to radiate. He looks into my eyes unwaveringly and says “If anyone had told me 2 or 3 years ago that I would be in the place I am, I would never have believed them”.

What is this dream about?

This dream for me is clearly a visitation. This rarely happens in dreams, but I’m convinced Neil came to me to tell me that he is okay and happy where he is.

The dream took place the morning that I was leaving to fly to Calgary, Alberta, and from there take a trip in a helicopter with one of the men who evacuated Neil’s body from the Wapta Ice Fields. The friend who was taking me to the airport awakened me just at the end of the dream.

This dream tells me that Neil is still in the family, that he still cares for Scott and is still a part of the struggles that Scott deals with in his life. Neil was Scott’s best friend and during his life was very concerned for him. I am hugely comforted to believe that Neil is still here, a part of our family, and someone who remains with us around family crises.

The unknown country is where Neil is (for me) and I believe that this dream came to me to help me accept that Neil does not struggle with knowing whether he is alive or dead. When Neil died and his body was up in the mountain for 8 days, I was tortured that he might not know he was dead. I don’t know where this came from, but it was very real to me, and lasted until I had this dream (so almost 3 months). I would talk to him every day and tell him what I knew about what had happened, why they couldn’t get his body out right away, weather conditions, etc. Because the weight of his pack caused him to go over the edge head first, he was unconscious very quickly, and I was terrified that he didn’t know he was dead. I had this need to help him understand that he was dead so that he could find peace. Not because I have a particular belief in the afterlife (I still believe it is a mystery and should remain so), but because I was driven to connect with him and love does very peculiar things.
Again we have the road/path/journey. It’s significant that he is on one side of the road and I on the other. We don’t touch in the dream, and awake I remember clearly that we are in separate countries – we didn’t sit down side by side as we might have when having a picnic. That we are on opposite sides of a path is fraught with significance.
I went to Calgary, and Lake Louise, and up into the mountain with so much more calm because of this dream, because Neil made it so. The relationship never ends.