FB Message from Julie Tilden Brown And Her Dream About Brendan.

Julie

Hi Wendy, Corinne, Alexa, I wanted to share a dream I had the other night about Brendan. I drove to Niagara Falls because we were having a memorial celebration there for him. I arrived and it wasn't at the falls like I expected it would be but instead we gathered at a calm pool downstream. A river made its way into this glass room, like a greenhouse.It was beautiful and warm inside. I looked around and saw all the familiar faces that loved Brendan and everyone sat along the edges of the river and dropped a stone into the water. I didn't realize we were suppose to bring a favorite or meaningful rock but I reached in my pocket and there was one, from my favorite beach (Egypt, in Scituate where I grew up). So I dropped the rock in and everyone was just sitting around the edges in silence, just listening to the sounds of the stream. My eyes filled up with tears and as I was wiping them away, I looked up and Brendan was standing there with a big smile on his face. He had a black dog on a red leash. It was a small black lab. I know he loved his cats so I'm not sure why he had a dog but I bent down and patted the dog and said, "I wasn't expecting you here!" Brendan through his eternal smile just laughed and slowly said I wasn't expecting me either." And we just stood and smiled at each other for a while before I woke up. Isn't that a beautiful dream?! I believe that we're visited by the ones we love in our dreams. I've always had such vivid dreams that I remember in great detail so this was really special to experience. I think he's smiling at all of us and letting us know that he's in a really good place.

Corinne

Thank you darling Julie for sharing this vivid dream. It seems that memories of Christmases past are popping up in my consciousness on a moment to moment basis and I'm filled with sadness & longing. Your sweet recollection brings aa abit of solace and comfort. I feel so blessed that Brendan was so dearly loved by so many. To know that he's doing well takes some of the sting out of my heartbreak. xoxo C-

Julie

Sending you hugs, Corinne.

Corinne

Alexa

I love this Julie
I’m a big believer in the power of dreams too.
He’s been on my mind a lot these days, especially after losing Marty recently as well. I am certain B is talking to all of us who love him in his own way.

Julie

8:22 AM

so amazing Julie, thank you so very much for telling us the dream. You described it so incredibly well that I could feel myself there too! Of course I am crying....as usual...I want to share something magical that happened this morning; so here is something I think is very interesting. I have chronic insomnia and I try to choose 8 hour continuous relaxing sounds on YouTube before I go to sleep. Last night I randomly chose this collection of sleeping/calming music. I woke this morning and was about to change the music and I notice the screen. To me it looks just like Brendan rowing a boat into the stars. I like how the the stars and fog are moving. I could just image Brendan saying, "I gotch your back Wendy, I gotchu....." which he said a lot when I was going through those months dealing with cancer. I'd love you to look at this link, you'll see what I mean. I'm including the photo of him that I took overlooking his secret beach, because the image in the boat has a similar look. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EEq9S4BT5E&t=19919s

Sleeping Music, Calming Music, Music for Stress Relief, Relaxation Music, 8 Hour Sleep Music, ☯3500

Sleeping Music, Calming Music, Music for Stress Relief, Relaxation Music, 8 Hour Sleep Music, ☯3500 - YellowBrickCinema’s Sleep Music is the perfect relaxing...

youtube.com

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Alexa

Brendan and I shared the dreaded sleep issue of insomnia. I could imagine him there as I sleep, rowing us into the stars, his way of looking out for me.

Julie

That’s beautiful Wendy. Yes it looks like him...he was guiding you through your dreams. I know this time of year must be particularly hard. Sending you big hugs.

thanks Julie...Yes...It doesn't seem to stop being hard. However I'm so looking forward to see Corinne & Al next week for 6 days. Hugging them is the closest I can get to hugging Brendan.

Oh yeah, I just saw this on my nightstand. I forgot that I wrote this before going to bed last night. I wanted to see if Brendan would talk to me in my dreams on Solstice. And it looks like did!

Like he did

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See Brendan Guiding Me in His Boat Towards the Stars

Dec 22, 2018

I choose a random YouTube video/sound to sleep to for 8 hours.  I choose this Sleeping Music, Calming.....I look at the screen upon waking and there is Brendan rowing the boat, looking after me.

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Saudade: Portuguese Word Describing My Grief

After all these months I finally found the right word, but in Portuguese.

Saudade: (Pronounced: sowdaj) One of the world's most untranslatable terms. The word means: to evoke deep soul-rending sadness, flavored with longing and melancholy.

SadnessPainYearning

When my grief therapist asks me how I'm feeling, there's never precisely ONE word in English to describe it. So I just say, "sadnesspainyearning" really fast 3x's. Luckily she 'gets' me.

None of this matter Toots, What matters is in the heart.

Early Solstice Morning, coming out of a fitful sleep, not quite awake.... I hear Brendan's voice. He says nonchalantly, "We changed each other for the better Toots." I see him, wearing a headband and vaping, contemplative.....looking just like he always did.



I'm thinking about my obligations this morning. The car payment and the extra rent. How will I maintain it for the next four years before I can retire?....And then....Brendan's voice in my head:

"None of this matters Toots, what matters is in the heart"

"Speaking of your loved one can keep their presence with you from far across the boundaries of the point where life meets death. It is a way to honor them, and a way to honor your feelings. It keeps their love alive in you. It extends the meaning of their life into the world in powerful and meaningful ways. It gives them back a voice in a world hell-bent on forgetting.

It’s okay to speak of them, to them, and even for them when there is good that can be done by you because they have lived. What better way to honor a life, than to extend this love to others?" from Rebelle Society

Cocoon: A Short Film About Grief & Loss

Article: Loving My Son, After His Death

Article: Loving My Son, After His Death


By Nora Wong
Dec. 2, 2016

I can feel their unasked questions. People wonder how I can still stand, still walk, still laugh. But they don’t ask. You can’t ask that of a mother who has lost her child. My son, Daniel, died three years ago at the age of 22. When people ask me, “How… are you?,” that pause, that inflection, tells me that’s really what they want to know.

I am tempted to tell them that it is I who am lost, not he. I am lost in my search for him, knowing he is nowhere on this earth. And still, it would not surprise me if he were to appear by my side wearing only his jersey boxers eating a snack at the kitchen counter. At times I can almost smell his warm cheesy breath and his still-boyish sweat. But when I look over my shoulder, he is not there.

My mind invents stories. Daniel is not dead; he is lamenting the performance of his fantasy football team with high school buddies while they wait on line for ice cream at Magic Fountain. He is in his dorm room at Stanford, talking deep into the night with his friends. Daniel is lingering with new friends on the rooftop of his investment firm in Boston where he just started working.

“Where are you, Daniel?” I shout the question to the sky when I am strong enough to bear the silence that follows. “Why did you die?” Even that has no real answer. His doctors think Daniel died of new onset refractory status epilepticus, or Norse, a rare seizure disorder in which healthy people with no history of epilepsy suddenly begin to seize uncontrollably. The majority of patients die or survive with significant brain damage. There is no identified cause or established treatment for Norse. This cloud of uncertainty does not obscure what I know: My child is dead.


The instinct to protect one’s offspring runs through mothers of virtually all species. I violated the basic canon of motherhood. I failed to protect my child. That my child is dead while I still live defies the natural order.

I love my husband and our two surviving children, but I couldn’t simply transfer my love for Daniel to them. It was for him alone. And so, for the longest time after his death, my love for Daniel bruised me.

So unbearable was my occluded heart that I called out to him in desperation one day: “What will I do with my love for you, Daniel?”

My eyes were closed in grief when suddenly I seemed to see him before me, his arms bent and lifted upward in supplication. In my mind’s eye, his face was suffused with love and tinged with exasperation, a common look for Daniel.

“Just love me, Mom,” he says.

“But where are you?” I ask.

“I’m here!” he answers with frustration. And then he is gone.

I had not heard his voice since the day before he suddenly fell ill. I spoke to him while he lay unseeing and unmoving in the hospital bed. I told him I loved him. I begged him to speak to me. I begged him to come back to me. He never answered or moved to squeeze my hand. The only flicker from him over his 79 days of hospitalization was a single tear. One day a tear slid from his left eye down his cheek and disappeared beneath his chin.

And now, months after he had died, I felt him before me.

“Just love me, Mom. I’m here!”

His words unleashed a torrent. I fell forward, my tears streaming. I felt breathless with release. I could continue to love him. I would love him in a new way.

It was harder to do than I expected. I would see him everywhere, in every full moon, in each brilliant day. My spirits would soar. But there were days when a weight in my heart made each breath shallow and every step an effort.

On the worst days I sit before my laptop and pour out my feelings to the only person who can take in my sorrow and remain unbowed. The keyboard is damp when the final refrain leaves my fingertips: I love you, Daniel, I love you. I miss you. I miss you. And then I press “send.”

Daniel’s friends continue to visit us. It is a pilgrimage of sorts. My heart tightens when I see them. Their presence illuminates our immeasurable loss.

His friends reveal to me how much Daniel meant to them. Now there will be a missing groomsman at the wedding and empty air in the place of a steadfast friend. At the end of one visit, a young man asks, “Recognize this sweater?” I don’t. “It’s Daniel’s,” he explains. I suddenly recognize Daniel’s old cotton sweater stretched to fit his friend. The young man folds forward to touch the sleeves of the sweater, hugging himself. He is tall and blond and athletic. He and Daniel were opposites in looks and temperament, best friends since nursery school. He had just returned from Moscow where he was working. “I wear this when I travel,” he says, touching the arm of the sweater again. “It’s so soft.”

I encourage Daniel’s friends to tell me about their work and their plans for the future. At first they are self-conscious, and their voices are tender. They don’t want to hurt me with their future plans when there is no future for Daniel. But as they speak of the things they will do and the places they will go, their excitement breaks free. I smile into the glow of their unlined, earnest faces and I feel my son. I think they feel him too. For a moment we are all reunited.

I will carry this child for the rest of my life. He lives within me, forever a young man of 22. Others will carry him as they move forward in their lives. He will be with them when they look out to the world with compassion, when they act with determination and kindness, when they are brave enough to contemplate all the things in life that remain unknown.

I still search for him, but without desperation. I look for him in others. My search is lifted by his words: “Just love me. I’m here.”

Nora Wong, the executive director of the Norse Institute, is working on a memoir.

I Miss You In Ways I Didn't Know Existed

Dream of Brendan....Sunday, December 16

I had such a sad dream last night. I was able to see Brendan only at a certain time of day at a certain place. I think it was a combination of the Trader Joe's Parking Lost (I meant "lot" but I typed the word lost by mistake?) and the University.  I was able to see him at a distance only.  He was always on foot and wearing his green backpack.  In the dream I had become accustomed to being there to watch him so that I could see him again. I was only allowed to see him from a distance.

But after some time passed, Brendan no longer showed up at that place or time. In the dream I start sobbing and crying out in agony. I fall to the ground. The loss is so great that I can't stop crying.....