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Hi, this is Dr. Mark; I'll be glad to help with interpreting these dreams.

First, though, let me extend to you my condolences on your son's death. It sounds so tragic and I can only imagine how difficult it has been for you. Your dreams bear witness to this. Let me explain.

Dreams are not "objective" experiences, meaning they are not events that happen "to" the person and so can be interpreted based on objective criteria that apply to all. For example, when you go to get in your car and it won't start, we treat that as an objective experience wherein you have your car towed to the garage. It could have been your car, my car, or any car, the same interpretation would be given to each one of us were we to experience the event of our car not starting. Get it fixed.

Dreams, however, are not like that. They have a symbiotic relationship with the person, the person's life experiences, the person's personality, and many other factors. Therefore, the way we work with dreams in psychotherapy will be determined not just by the set of visual memories you have of the dreams but by many parts of what must be taken into account that I mentioned.

Your dreams are very close to your conscious experience and are very direct messages between your subconscious self and your conscious self.

The most direct of them all is the most memorable, which makes sense given how traumatic this year has been for you. The dream focuses on two things: your reaction to his behavior and his subsequent actions.

Remember, every dream has settings, characters, etc. that are there to give fullness of emotion. The emotions in this dream are not expressed; only actions are expressed and every action introduced at first is normal. This goes along with being at a park and playing marbles. The setting and activity are "normal" activities. You express a normal statement. You then recede from the dream:

Your son becomes the focus of the dream. No more emotions are described. It is his actions and others' actions that fill the dream.

The question, then, is where are the emotions?

And the answer is that they need to be resuscitated. This is the meaning of the other dream you shared, where you cry uncontrollably with your mother for your son.

So, there are two parts to the traumatic experience: one is the events and the actions; the other is the emotions. And this is where they need to converge:

In the park dream, you had a role in his death: you tried to warn him. In the tumor dream, you had no role other than to mourn. Those need to be bridged. Your subconscious was making the journey from feeling as though maybe you should have done more (don't put in your mouth, maybe was not enough) to that it was beyond your control (tumor).

This is a healthy journey and one I wish for you to embrace: that you need to accept in your conscious self what your subconscious self is saying: there is a journey from being part of the blame of his death to being the mourner of his death. Your subconscious self is letting you know that it recognizes you are a mourner and not responsible.

I wish you the very best!

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