ABSTRACT
This chapter amplifies a dream that came two weeks after my daughter’s death. Works by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, John Bowlby, Colin Parkes, and Joan Didion refer to the “stages of grief.” The Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone is presented as an archetypal “map” of the mourning process. Jung’s comments on death as “a fearful piece of brutality,” Gilles Quispel’s phrase “a crack in the universe” and Charlotte Mathes’s book on grief are cited. The work of Emmanuel Kennedy and Geri Grubbs on “metapsychic” or “transliminal” dreams evokes the numinous quality of grief dreams. Then I discuss the three central symbols in my dream: a dark red sweater, fertilizing tears, and the unique “ground” of my daughter’s being. Works by Loring M. Danforth and Alexander Tsiaris, Stanislav Grof, Marie-Louise von Franz, and Paul Tillich further amplify the dream’s images. The chapter ends with a quote from Greg Mogenson on the individual work of mourning.
