As hope waned that conventional radiation or chemotherapy might put my sister into remission, or at least slow down the rapid spread of metastatic breast cancer, I had a brief but extremely vivid dream. I saw a small car, identical to mine, wrecked in the median of a freeway. I didn't see the wreck itself occur, but saw the driver's door spring open from the force of the single car wreck, and a body fly out, bounce once, and then lie on the ground, as limp as a rag doll, and clearly dead. In the dream, I was trying to force myself to approach, but was nearly paralyzed by fear. Just before I was close enough to clearly see who it might be, I awoke, feeling very disturbed, and had difficulty shaking the dream off. I assumed the dream represented my fear of my sister dying.

Over the next few weeks, I had several vivid flashbacks of the dream - sometimes while fully awake, and sometimes in that early morning period when you are not fully asleep, but not fully awake, and dreams have a hallucinogenic quality to them.

I decided to process the dream through light trance work with the therapist with whom I was working, Kit. With her guidance and support, I was finally able to approach the body, and see it was not a body at all. It was a life-sized Raggedy Ann doll, except the the face was featureless muslin, with no eyes, nose or mouth stitched on. Kit suggested I ask the rag doll if it had something to say to me. No answer. I was bumfuzzled, and for a little while, so was Kit. Then she suggested the rag doll might be a mask, and suggested I ask anyone who might be behind the rag doll to come from behind the mask and speak.
I remember that when my sister stepped out from behind the rag doll, I burst into tears, still believing the dream was primarily about my fears for her.

My sister began to speak with calm intensity. In essence, she told me that she needed me to face my fear of my own death, and to quit trying to hide behind her, it was too much of a burden.

That insight changed the way I related to my sister and allowed me to be much more present and supportive of her during her last few months of life.