The Woman In The River

י' בסיון תש"ע
Mab 11

Last night, I dreamt.

I was the matriarch of my household. I had no husband and provided for my family.

Our house stood at the top of a hill which stood by a river with a bridge crossing it. It had rained heavily, but wasn't raining in the dream though the sky had the color of a rainy day in it. The river was engorged with water which flooded over the bridge crossing it. The river flowed from the north to the south. I was standing southernly facing the north, facing the river as it flowed toward my vision.

I watched as one car with a lone male driver dared enter onto the flooded bridge, moving from the bank on my right in the east (as I faced the river flowing from north to south). The car with the lone driver in it made it across and wasn't swept off the bridge.

I watched as the same car and emboldened driver, now with a woman passenger in it, tried to drive back across the river from the west bank to the east bank. He drove the car sideways and with haste, speeding and sliding over the flooded bridge. Initially, he made it across - but when the car's wheels touched the wet soil of the high eastern embankment, the car slid backwards, flipping over and falling back into the flooded water of the river. The car started to sink with the woman belted to the passenger seat inside, with the passenger window closed, and with the passenger door locked. The man escaped through the car window on his side which was open.

He swam and made it to the river's shore, thinking that the woman was also swimming to safety, but she wasn't. She was trapped inside the car which had now sunk completely underwater. He rallied his friends who were watching from the eastern bank and they dove into the river to try and save the woman trapped in the car. They couldn't. They couldn't find the car nor the woman inside it in the depths of the murky water of the flooded river. She drowned. The man and his friends eventually climbed out of the water for the last time, without the woman.

I woke up, watching from my place on the hill over it.