My Lost Best Friend: Dreaming About My Mother As If She Were Still Alive

Reader’s Question

My mother and I were very close. In fact you could say that she was my best friend. Unfortunately, she passed away in 1995. Lately I’ve been having dreams about her being alive and doing things with me in present time like she had never died. I just want to know why Im having these now after all these years.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Over the years, there have been many competing theories about how and why we dream. Some researchers say that dreams are merely the insignificant random firing of our neurons during sleep. Other say that dreams are an attempt to impose some sort of order and meaning on those random firings. Still others say that dreams are ways our unconscious mind works out problems and attempts to put some sort of closure to the conflicts we experience during the waking state.

Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams are a sort of “wish fulfillment” exercise or attempt to satisfy unconscious desires too unacceptable or impossible to effect in the real world. Although this theory appears lacking in its ability to explain nightmares, it seems to have at least some validity in other circumstances.

You indicate that you were very close to your mother and that she was like a best friend to you. It’s possible that there are some real world issues going on with you at the present time that are causing you to miss her more than you have in the recent past. During times of stress, alienation, etc. it’s natural for us to really want and need our best friends. Also, some things can happen or we can find ourselves in situations that remind us of a person, remind us of our loss, or remind us of the good times we once shared with them. “Anniversary” dates can also be fairly stressful. Of course we know it’s impossible to have direct physical contact in the present with the loved ones we’ve lost. Our dreams can be a way of letting us experience what’s impossible to have in the real world.

If such an explanation represents a good “fit” for your situation, it may be a good idea to examine what might be going on in your life right now that’s making your loss all the more poignant and re-kindling your feelings toward your mother. It might even be a good idea to talk things over with a counselor. Although it’s understandable that you miss the person you were so close to, it’s also possible that your mother represented something absent in your life right now that you’re struggling to secure. Exploring these possibilities in counseling might well help you answer many of your questions.