The last dream of the year
And the first dream of the year
On the last night of the year, what will you dream?
On the first night of the year, what will you dream?
I was thinking about this last night as I was falling asleep. While I was thinking that tonight (New Year’s Eve) is the last dream of the year, it’s really last night (the 30th) for many, as for those who stay up to ring in the new year, their next dream will take place in 2025.
It made me think about my mom, who fell asleep in 2020 and never woke up in 2021.
What was her last dream? Did she dream in the long, 16-day coma sleep before she passed away?
In 2020, that most awful terrible year of sickness and isolation and fear and death, my mom went to sleep on New Year’s Eve. The next morning, she slept in longer than usual and my dad couldn’t wake her up. A type 1 diabetic, her blood sugar had crashed overnight and sent her into shock. She went to the hospital alone in an ambulance. For sixteen days she laid in limbo, occasionally giving a small glimmer of a sign that she might wake up- a twitch, an eye flutter, lots of writhing- but never quite made it back. She passed away on January 16th after this long, deep sleep from which she never awoke.
As someone who is early to bed, early to rise, I never understood the compulsion that people have to stay up to see the new year arrive. After this happened, though, it made sense to me. Not everyone makes it. Not everyone wakes up in the new year. It is a gift to see it, to witness the turning of the calendar page and the ringing in of a new year.
I wonder if my mom had dreams while she was in the coma, what she dreamed of. Or if the sleep was too deep for that. I wonder if she could hear our voices across the tablet as we zoomed into the hospital room (COVID regulations kept us from being able to be there with her, but the nursing staff would prop a tablet in front of her so we could talk to her), if our pleas made it across the sleep space.
I am thinking about this as I wake up on New Year’s Eve, having dreamed my last dream of 2024, wondering what dream I will begin 2025 with.
In the northern hemisphere, as we prepare to turn the calendar page, we are in the deep dark.
The deep dark wants us to rest.
The deep dark wants us to sleep.
The deep dark wants us to dream.
In Costa Rica where I live, we are close enough to the equator that shifts in light are minimal, yet also noticeable. Over the break, we traveled north to New England and Idaho, where the darkness is much more palpable, more visceral.
Modernity and capitalism have disoriented us from these natural cycles. In many ways, we might feel like we have to do even more during the holiday season, attending and hosting parties, buying gifts, socializing, traveling (as we are), rather than rest, what nature is calling us towards. Winter calls us to rest, return to the earth, slow down, heal. If we skip this part of the natural cycle, we miss a regenerative part of the cycle of life.
December 31/January 1 is of course only one way to mark the new year. There are many new years across cultures, including the lunar new year and the astrological new year marked by the spring equinox. Marking these new years can also be a practice of ancestral reclamation and healing our relationship with time. As a way of honoring endings and beginnings, it can be a way of healing our relationship with death.
This is our last Prism post of the year. We began this over a year ago, I am just realizing as I write this (our first post was in October 2023).
Thank you for being a part of our journey of dreamwork of a path of healing, ancestral reclamation, and collective liberation.
May your last dream of the year help you release what you don’t want to carry forward.
May your first dream of the year be illuminating and nourishing seeds for the cycles to come.
May your rest be deep, and may you wake to see the turning of a new day, in gratitude to see the start of another cycle.
Sweet dreams and happy new year!
Stephanie
so much gratitude for our journey together and with others who have journeyed with us in varied lengths along the way <3