Dream Weaver

Do you know what’s real? Really?

If you are like me, there are certain songs that come on that stop you from doing what you’re doing and you have to, you HAVE TO let your whole undivided self absorb them. And it does not matter how many times you’ve heard them in the past—you never get tired of ‘em. For some reason or another, those songs touch something deep within, almost, if not exactly, to the depth of our Souls—down where Truth always resides.

Maybe it’s a remembrance of a certain time in life. Maybe it’s because its poetry captures the emotions you were experiencing in a time long ago, or even still. Maybe because its prose is your truth (“How did they know? This song is about ME!”). Maybe specific people come to mind—loves, crushes, friends, mentors…someone close to you who’s died. Maybe it prompts a longing, a melancholy, for a time that will never be recaptured. Maybe it surfaces a lament for a road not taken. Maybe upon hearing it, unspoken language asks “What if…?” or “If only….”

Maybe it’s all of this. Or none of it. Maybe it’s just because it’s a catchy tune and there need be no explanation why it touches you so. It just does, so there.

And if it has been some time since you’ve heard that song, and you’ve gone down the path of your journey after adding more life experience, and you hear the song again, and because you are not that same person anymore but someone deeper, (or maybe you’ve invited into your home your 84 year old father and you see everything differently now)…maybe it hits you differently and maybe even more deeply—and maybe you have a hard time realizing that that was even possible.

But here you have it.

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No, for reals. Stop and ask yourself how do you know if something is real? When you can see it? Hear it? Feel it? Taste it? If it can hurt you? If you can kill it?

What if it shows up in a dream?

What is real and how do you know?

It’s not such a simple question. There is no clear answer. And besides, your reality is by default different from mine anyway. Do we live in the same reality if I am color-blind? What about if I’m deaf? Or completely blind? Or was born without arms or legs?

Or if I’m 84 years old with Lewy dementia?

For reals.

There's so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones

~ Mark Knopfler

Unless I’m at the store, I’m typically less that 50 feet from Dad at all times. But he’s in a different world. Dad is currently living multiple realities. And there is no talking him out of it. Or rather, there is no talking his brain out of it.

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Brains don’t care; they can’t tell the difference anyway.

It has been proven by neuroscientists that the brain itself does not need a body to distinguish between physical reality and visualized reality. It just doesn’t matter. To a brain, it is all the same—just neurons firing: creating new synaptic connections, pruning old ones. This is why mindfulness practices like focused visualizations work—and why they matter. This is why a body’s physiology can change (heartbeat, blood pressure, perspiration, etc.) in response to an imagined stimulus or stressor just as much as from an actual stressor (or during scary night terrors). Let’s prove this shall we?

Experimental pause: take a couple slow, deep breaths. Even close your eyes while you do. Now, with as much vibrancy that you can imagine, picture a bright, yellow, ripe lemon in your hand. You cut into it and take a large wedge of that lemon, noticing its moist, glistening flesh as you begin to smell the citrusy tartness of the rind. And then you bring that thick lemon up to your mouth and take a bite.

Now, chances are, if you are like most, and if you seriously paused to visualize this clearly, your body physically responded to this visualization by secreting an abundance of saliva from your salivary glands. In other words, your physiology changed simply due to an unreal, imagined event—completely fabricated in your mind. Your mind created a reality for your body to respond to.

Okay, back to our story:

This is also why healing can occur from so many different forms of trauma with the right kind of mindfulness cognitive therapy. Brains don’t really care what is below the neck when it comes to distinguishing reality from not reality in how the body is experiencing its environment. To a brain, it’s all the same.

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There is an anecdote from an American Viet Nam war hero who was captured and kept prisoner for a long time who happened to love golf and was a regular player before he entered the military. When asked how he managed to survive and pass time in captivity, he said one of the things he did the most during those captive months in his cell was visualize rounds of golf at his favorite golf course back in the states. He would imagine everything in as great a detail as possible—from the color and smell of the grass; to the sounds the clubs made in his bag; to the feel of the driver and putter in his hands; and then the approach, address, and easy flow of the swing and putt. He would visualize walking the fairways and reading the greens. He would hear the ball enter the cup with that sound unique in all of sports. He said he would regularly play a full round of 18 holes—all in his imagination.

When he was freed and played his first rounds of golf after his captivity, his handicap had improved all without having walked or played a single course or holding a single club in over 5 years. He was scoring better after his captivity then he ever had before he entered the military.

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Okay then, what are dreams?

Ever have a dream that was SO vivid you had to have a few quiet moments upon waking when you had to make sure they were just dreams? Maybe you were glad to realize in your drowsiness that “oh thank god, that was just a dream.” Or maybe you were peeved to realize in your drowsiness that it was just a dream that you wished were “real” and that it continue! (I’ll let you insert your own dream here to prove this point!). Those dreams are housed in the brain—and because we are talking about the firing of neurons, in a dream, whether you remember them or not, they can be just as vibrant and detailed as if you really were living it…for reals. And with all the accompanying physiological responses of the body (racing pulses, increased perspiration and blood pressure, anxiety, muscle contractions, sleep walking/eating, arousal, vocalizations, etc…you get it; I’ll stop there.). Because, in those dream-states, the brain is not distinguishing actual lived reality from the dream. Remember, that’s not what brains do.

This is both an evolutionary blessing and a curse—at the same time. But, we CAN use it to our advantage. Therapies of all sorts, cognitive as well as physical, all aim to bring about changes in the brain to help compensate, replace, and/or heal real or imagined wounds or habits dealt upon our bodies. The plasticity of our brains make this a profound reality and game-changer in the mental health sciences.

This, however, supposes one has a brain capable of a regulated and integrated potential.

Which is why Gary Wright’s 1975 song was so far ahead of it’s time. And why I’m appreciating it more—it’s grown in depth over time for me as I live along side Dad now.

“Dream Weaver…”

But, place a wonderful and gentle brain on Parkinson’s and Lewy dementia, and the song changes—it takes on a different meaning entirely.

Though Dad’s brain retains a measure of plasticity still, dementia is following closely behind rewiring and tangling up and even disintegrating neural pathways that manifest in a perceived reality this is atypical and foreign to the rest of us. Causing all of us to question:

What is real?

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As you read this next part, really try to imagine you are living it. Imagine…

You are watching TV and two cats walk past from the washroom, in front of the TV, to the hallway leading to your bedroom so you turn and ask your son how those cats got in the house when you didn’t think your son had pet cats. (He doesn’t.)

Or you stare and wonder at the two people, a man and a woman with no face, who are standing over there in the corner staring at you and you don’t know who they are nor where they came from nor how they got in the house without you noticing.

And then, another time, you ask your son if he was the one who let those people in to your bedroom last night…and why would he do that? Doesn’t your son know they laid down on the bed over there and just stared at you?

And then you ask why those boys were in your room last night throwing balls at you. And you try to convince your son that was scary and you didn’t like that and to please lock the door so they don’t come in anymore.

And then tomorrow is Thanksgiving when the date now is only October 6 and you wonder when family is coming over.

And “when are we going to sell the rest of the ranch?” when you sold off everything in 1995; and then…

And then, when your son comes down to get you up out of your chair from a night of fitful sleep, you look over at him and whisper in the predawn dim “Annie’s there.” The son asks: “What dad? You see mom? Mom is here?” And you answer with a nod in her direction: “Yes, Annie’s right there.”

How do you tell your Dad that none of that “was real” when you know these are the things his brain is manufacturing and you know, for him, every single one of them is real.

Welcome to Dad’s World…

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…and welcome to a brain on dementia.

Elderings:

This is where my lived experience with Dad takes two different paths—one the emotional, ‘cuz he’s my Dad; the other the scientific, ‘cuz I’m a brain nerd. On path one, I feel Dad’s pain and worry and confusion and fear when those hallucinations are happening. They aren’t always happening during dreaming sleep. For Dad, those cats, and kids, and Mom are real—and there is real confusion if you try to convince him none of it was; but there is also the slightest hint of acknowledgment that this is what Parkinson’s is and what Parkinson’s does. And he’s astonished at that each and every time. I sometimes am at a loss as to how to classify my own emotions at those times—but I do know there is understanding and compassion in what he is experiencing. I wish, often, I could see and feel what he sees and feels.

Sometimes, especially if he brings up some of those dreams or visualizations, we will talk about them, and explore them, and I will remind him he is always safe here with us even when those dreams are so real that the body’s physiology matches the emotion of whatever the dream is conjuring—fear, sadness, joy, anger—because that is exactly how the brain is wanting the body to respond. And that is exactly what Kristin and I hear, in his voice at night, during 2am night terrors, over our monitor.

On path two, I know none of this is in Dad’s control—it’s what is happening organically in his brain as it continues on its course of disintegration and dysregulation. If he had the power to choose, he wouldn’t choose this. This is why it is hard to place the language of rationality around these episodes when, to Dad, it’s hard to talk him out of his strongly felt sense of reality. Believing the dreams are true, and then behaving as if they are true, is irrational but it is where Dad’s Parkinsonian brain is; knowing the physiological and evolutionary mechanisms behind the dreaming and dysregulating brain is fully rational. But that doesn’t help Dad much. It just, for me, expands the breadth of compassion—because I get it.

So, what is helpful in those moments?

There is no one answer to this either. Dad and I take those moments when they come. At night, when it is obvious, because of his dream-state vocalizations, that he is having a night terror, we ride them out. I’m getting better at detecting when he seems to be more wakeful and could benefit from my physical presence to provide some reassurance of safety. Sometimes, but not always, he will want to talk about “last night” with me at some point in the morning; sometimes I might be the one to initiate the conversation if I sense he’s still holding on to some of that energy, and if it feels like talking through it might be helpful. More often than not, we don’t talk about them. The last thing I want to do is add on to his confusion or worry. So most times now, when we do talk about them, our conversations are more explorations as I simply ask him to talk with me about what he saw and heard and felt. And I never, ever, make him feel bad for him living in his brand of reality—it’s a sensitive dance as I navigate when it’s okay to be in his reality vs. making sure he knows he’s safe and that some of those visions were only imagined. “This is what Parkinson’s does” is what we say to each other at times.

I am learning he retains more of the details and emotions in some of those nightmares than I thought. And because he does, and I know my Dad and his MO, he’ll ruminate, and ruminate, and ruminate on it. And he’ll worry. When he worries enough, usually he’ll say something to me.

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So, what is real? And how do you know?

Your brain thinks otherwise.

What does your heart say?

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Wait, there’s one more path that we are simultaneously on as we walk along-side Dad’s journey. It is a path of mystery that only poets and mystics from time immemorial have described and handed down to generations of seekers and finders in search of deeper meaning than just the physical world. It’s the path for people who have asked “There’s got to be more to life than just this.”

And likely, it is the one path where all the answers can be found. It’s a place, in fact, where there are no questions or problems—so there is actually no need for answers. It’s not a path that fear treads—this is not a place where worry or hatred or fear can exist. Instead, it’s that place where time slips away into the past, where we “leave tomorrow behind,” where only Love abides—the place only Souls inhabit.

THAT’s the journey’s end.

And it may be the only real thing in all the Universe.

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May this become a favorite song of yours, now. With apologies to Johnny Cash, Dad doesn’t know it’s his favorite now, too. And may you hear it, now and forevermore, in a different way—through the lens of my Dad. Consider it an Eldering from him, via the creative genius of Gary Wright, that can live in perpetuity—as long as we keep playing the song…and as long as we stop to listen.

By the way, just who is this “Dream Weaver” dude? Dad would like to have a few words with him.

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I've just closed my eyes again
Climbed aboard the dream weaver train
Driver take away my worries of today
And leave tomorrow behind

Ooh, dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh, dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light

Fly me high through the starry skies
Maybe to an astral plane
Cross the highways of fantasy
Help me to forget today's pain

Ooh, dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh, dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light

Though the dawn may be coming soon
There still may be some time
Fly me away to the bright side of the moon
Meet me on the other side

Ooh, dream weaver
I believe you can get me through the night
Ooh, dream weaver
I believe we can reach the morning light
Dream weaver
Dream weaver

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Thank you Mr. Wright. Thank you. And if you can, send the Dream Weaver our way—but only with happy dreams from this point on.

Please.

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T Plus 117 days…and counting. And dreaming dreams that are real—if only for one beautiful mind and Soul. May your dreams be beautiful—even when they are not.

“Fly me away to the bright side of the moon. Meet me on the other side.”