Nightmares

It finally happened last night: I had a fire department related nightmare that involved FireDad’s death.

It was all very Ladder 49 with the red fire vehicle (our department has a pick up truck, not a sedan) arriving. But, to make the nightmare ten times worse, the fire department vehicle arrived at the funeral home where I was already gathered with my family… as my father passed away in my dream, too.

Talk about wanting to wake up. And I did wake up. At least twice. Each time I fell back to sleep, I was back in the same awful dream.

I — finally — woke up with that general feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. I huddled under the covers listening to the silence of the house. The boys were not yet awake. FireDad worked yesterday, and he was not yet home. So I lay there, my mind counting down minutes and imagining awful things. What if they had a big city fire in the middle of the night? What if they were responding to an accident on the interstate and something went wrong? What if something exploded? What if, what if, what if?

And then I heard the front door open. A wave of relief washed over me.

The last fire nightmare that I had was in 2009, but it didn’t involve any harm to my firefighter. This is the first time I’ve had a dream in which my husband was harmed. And, of course, my subconscious had to go and kill him off the first time it dares to think up a dream sequence of this nature. I’m putting my subconscious on probation. Indefinitely.

Today he is helping with the interviews for new firefighters. I wonder who they will be and if their partners/spouses are worried about this potential transition. Maybe I was projecting their fears into my dreams. Who knows. All I know is that he gets some extra cuddle time tonight, which is really not a bad thing at all.

But hopefully this means I have met my quota of fire specific nightmares for the year.