Dream of recently passed relative..obsession with light?

[Rebeccadavison]

Just two weeks ago my dear nana passed away peacefully at the age of 69 after a 4 month battle with terminal cancer. For background my nana was like my mother and best friend in one as I rarely see my actual mother, so losing her has really hurt me and affects my ability to get on with everyday life. Here's the dream: We were both in bed in my room at her house, she's on left of bed I'm on right, the bed is completely white and is very comfortable. She's lying there but has suduko (her favourite game) or something else, but either way she isn't sleeping she is just lying in bed relaxing. In the corner of the room the lamp is on, then in corridor the light is on and the bathroom light is on too, which doesn't have much effect to adding to the light from the corridor. I keep trying to turn the light off so we can sleep or whatever but she makes excuses as to why we should keep it on. For example, She said the bathroom one emits a pretty purple colour, but you couldn't even see it. She was peaceful but just wanted the lights on. I think at one point I tried turning the lamp off and she then pulled the covers over her head and hid, so I turned it off again and she went back to peacefully doing her thing. I think the dream could be quite symbolic Edit: she looked very healthy and full of colour in the dream, in real life she looked quite frail and off colour Thank you

[Athanor]

I’m sorry for your bereavement and the extra pain it has caused you. It looks like your dream is trying to give you a hint about how best to handle this very sad time of mourning for your nana. For example, the dream shows your nana as lying on the left side in the bed while you’re on the right side. The “left” in dreams usually symbolizes the unconscious mind and its great depths which it’s also possible to view as the place where the spirits of the dead go, that is, to the “Underworld”. At the very least, many pleasant memories of your nana exist in the personal part of your unconscious mind and these can be a very strong and reliable resource for you as you move forward in life. Maybe the dream is partly suggesting that you should let these good memories “play” in your mind perhaps when you’re relaxing or about to fall off to sleep (e.g. your nana is shown as playing a favourite game in bed and she looks healthy and well). In the dream, there are various lights on which usually symbolize conscious awareness of various matters. But you want to turn off the light in the bathroom because you feel it isn’t adding to the overall light in the room. Your nana is very persistent in not wanting the light turned off but you apparently do it anyway, causing her to be frightened and upset. The meaning of this part of the dream probably comes from the symbolism that is usually linked with bathrooms. For example, one use of the bathroom is of course to pee and the medical term for peeing is the “expression of urine”. This symbolically links it up to the free and open “expression” of emotions which shouldn’t be “held back” because doing so can hurt a person over time, just like not peeing for excessive periods of time can lead to serious medical problems. So the idea could be that the very understandable and distressing pain which you feel at your nana’s death should all the same not be held back and made unconscious (e.g. you turn off the light). Another symbolic meaning of a bathroom comes from the fact that there’s usually a bath tub or shower present. A bath tub is linked with the idea of water, cleansing, “baptism” and “rebirth”, so the idea could be that if the awareness of the pain over your nana’s death is “turned off” too much as it were, the chance of growth and renewal from this very sad event would not be as possible because the psychological space where this could happen (symbolized by the bathroom) would be “in the dark” and therefore not useable. Maybe the purple light which you can’t see but which your nana can represents a kind of acceptance and faith that over time, the pain you feel will gradually become less hard to bear, leaving only the good feelings that your nana gave you over the years. Anyway, I hope these ideas can be helpful in some way at this difficult time. Please feel free to ask any questions or to make any comments about this particular way of looking at your dream.

[Rebeccadavison]

Thank you very much for your insights, they're very helpful