I had a dream last night, or should I say early this morning right before I woke. Dreams are very difficult to remember let alone make sense of but I do remember parts of it vividly. It appears that after each dream you have in which you recall parts of, you always seem to wake. Normally you realize you were dreaming, but you are half unconscious and always want to go back to sleep afterwards. I almost did but as I was rolling over to check the time and then go back into a deep slumber for a few more hours, I recalled that this dream had my father in it so I forced myself to stay awake and try and remember the parts I could.
I would say this is the third dream I have had with my father in it since he has passed. None of them make any sense. The first was of my father sitting in the dinning room. He started to tell me that my ex is in deep trouble. As he put it, “You would not believe the kind of shit he is involved in.” My father then went on to tell me that he had gotten married. At this point I said, “WHAT? How the hell did he get married if we are not even technically divorced yet?” To this my father shrugged his shoulders and said, “I have no idea but he managed to find a way. Of course it is not technically legal, but he did it.” I was asking him more questions when my mother who was watering her plants on the windowsill had interrupted our conversation to say, “How the hell did he even get married, you are not divorced yet?” I began telling my mother that I had asked the same question and as she began to ramble on some more, I told her to be quiet as I was trying to listen to what Dad had to say. As I turned back to tell him to continue, he was gone.
The second dream that I can recall happened when I was away in Rhode Island. It was an odd dream and I only recall a brief portion of it. I was in the yard and I saw a tornado coming so I ran into the house. I began telling everyone to open the windows. I called a time as a child when Hurricane Gloria hit and we cracked all the windows just a tad to equalize the pressure in the house so the roof did not pop off or something. So here I am years later in a dream running around telling everyone to open the windows. As I am running through the house I ask, “Are you supposed to open them or close them…. I think they are supposed to be opened.” As I was frantically passing by the living room, I recalled seeing my father sitting in his chair watching me and he said in that, what are you stupid tone of voice that he often used- “Open- everyone knows you open them not close them.” So I began scurrying around the house trying to get the window open and everyone to safety. I have absolutely no idea why I was having this dream let alone why my father was watching me figure out how to equalize the pressure in the houses, but he was there nonetheless. Now the strange part about all this is that it was a short dream to my recollection and an odd one so I had forgotten it until breakfast that morning when my brother told me he had seen on the news that there was a tornado warning for Newport, RI and he did not think driving there to see the mansions was such a good idea. I mean what are the odds that I have a dream with my father, and impending tornado and an actual tornado warning for the town I happen to be at while on a long weekend away from home?
On to dream three which took place last night/ this morning. I recall that I was fishing with my father and my family. It was the 5 of us and we were all taking turns catching fish. As usual when it was my father’s turn, he did not catch anything and made this face he often did when he was disappointed or jealous that someone else had caught a fish or a bigger fish when he was striking out. In the end, he did end up catching one and had a big smile and a look of excitement about him even though I only saw him from the back or the side profile.
Now what is weird about this dream is that we were not on a boat at all and certainly not on his boat. The person fishing you could tell was raised up from the water almost as if they had been sitting in the fighting chair. You saw the pole and the person reeling in the fish. You could see someone stepping on the fish once it was reeled in to try and release the hook, but there was no boat that I recall- or perhaps there was at first. I saw the waves and the wake in my dream where the line had been cast as would be the case on the ocean where the engines cut through the water, but again, we were not on a boat and not on the ocean. I remember that there was only one fighting chair and so we all had to take turns. When one person would catch a fish, we would switch positions and the other 4 of us would entertain ourselves. The entertainment came in the form of swirling around a giant Olympic sized swimming pool with giant balloons that we were hanging onto. That’s right- we were not fishing on the ocean or on a lake, but in a giant swimming pool. Despite the fact I knew with absolute certainty that we were in a pool, the water was not crystal clear – it was a dark color as would be the case in the ocean of the Atlantic not too far off shore.
One person fished at a time from this imaginary fighting chair. There was a first mate who was baiting the hook and removing the fish but I never saw his face, I just knew he was there to help. There was a wake or a drag from where the imaginary boat engine had been cutting through the dark ocean waters of this swimming pool and in the back where 4 of us waiting our turn being dragged around in circles by ropes on large balloons or buoy balls as if we were tubing from the back of a race boat. As I said, the entire dream was odd, but it continued to get more so from what I can remember.
I believe that my father caught the last fish and it was his turn to ride the balloons around in circles while someone else fished. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves but it appears that all the water and swirling around had made my father a bit ill. The next thing I recall was him standing up and hunching over. He was throwing up and I was nervous it would be blood. My mother was all the sudden standing there and we went from this deep pool to very shallow waters where we could stand and it was only ankle or shin deep. As I was holding up my father saying, “What’s the matter are you going to throw up?” he did in fact start to vomit. My mother started instructing me to have him throw up on the stairs. I shifted my angle some to look up a tad and noticed a steep staircase. They were not your typical pool stairs, but the kind you might see in the back area of a supermarket or in an office building leading up to the next level.
I began taking my father up the stairs. I put his arm around my shoulder and my shoulder was in his armpit as I helped boost him up each step as I had done many a times before when he was ill. The next thing you know we were heading down a flight of stairs and my shoulder in his armpit and my other arm around his waist acted as a brace of sorts so that he could lean on me without having to worry about tumbling down the steps. The entire stair climbing incident reminded me very much of his last few days when he was too weak to climb the stairs at home and I all but had to carry him down in the morning and help him up to bed in the evening.
The next thing you know, we were at the bottom of these stairs and we are standing in some hallway or corridor area. There is a door to our left and I am about to take him through it when I look back and see my sister and mother making their way down the steps. I propped my father up for a moment and covered him with a big brown robe my aunt had bought him that he unfortunately only wore once before his passing. I asked my mother to throw down our shoes so we did not get our feet dirty on the germy floor. I take it that behind that door was some medical facility or hospital. All the sudden I had shoes and I threw them down on the floor and helped my father lift one foot at a time. I saw his feet as clear as day. He had the most ugly toes and we used to joke that at times his toenails would get so long he could hang from a tree and swing from them. Well don’t you know it, in my dream, his big nasty big toe toenail got caught and I had to bend down to maneuver the sandals around the nails.
With sandals on and wrapped in a robe, I looked over at my father and he did not look well. I asked him, “Do you want us to take you to the hospital?” He did not answer as I know he knew that he needed to go there but did not want to go. He hated when we took him to the hospital in his final days. I just said to his non-reply, “We are going to take you to the hospital now.” As I looked up at him, all the sudden he looked very, very ill. His face was sunken in and a bit jaundice and waxy looking. His eyes were wide open and shimmered in the light but it was a blank stare of someone that was there physically, but not mentally. His eyes were big and black yet they appeared blurry and glossed over if that makes any sense. To tell you the truth, he looked as he did on his deathbed at the hospital. The last time I saw his eyes like that, I had to pull them closed after he had passed away.
As I stood there preparing to open the door to our left, my sister was running down the stairs with my father’s phone. He had a blackberry towards the end which he affectionately referred to as his BLUEberry, yet in the dream, my sister was carrying my father’s old Nextel phone that was work issued. She began saying it was some guy Steve from Newsday. I looked over at my father and knew he was too ill to take the call. I told my sister, “He can’t talk now he is very sick.” I am not sure if all the sudden my sister relayed a message, but it was as if I were hearing the conversation on the other end of the line. It appeared they wanted to check in and see how my father was doing. They also told my sister that when we were ready, they had prepared an obituary for him if we wanted to use it. Of course they would let us read it and approve it before hand but it was ready for print. This guy Steve also told us that they had an old photo of him from 1992 or 1993 where he was shooting a football game for them which they wanted to use unless we would rather use a different photo of our choosing. As my sister was relaying the message to me, I looked over and my father still had that blank stare on his face. He looked almost comatosed. I started talking to him and there was no reply. I tried to shake him a bit and then I broke down hysterical crying and grabbed him to hug him. It was too late, he appeared to be gone. My mother reached over to grab my sister and hug her- phone still in her hand. The two of them where hysterical crying as I stand there hugging my father. But wait……all the sudden a faint voice - a very faint voice. My father was not gone just yet, he had a brief moment where he tried to whisper something in my ear just before he was gone for good. I yelled out, “Quiet, he is trying to say something” but when I leaned over to ask him to repeat it, there was silence. This time he was gone and this is also where I woke up.
I know it is only a dream, but oh how I wish I was able to hear the message my father was trying so desperately to whisper in my ear. If only everyone else had not been making so much noise I could have heard him. You see when my father passed for real, I never go to say good-bye to him- at least not in a way that he could hear, understand and respond to me. Oh how I wish I had a chance to tell my father good-bye and have him tell me a few last words of wisdom before he passed. By the time I go to be alone with him in the hospital that cold night in January, he was non-responsive. The nurse thinks he had slipped into a coma a few hours before. Everyone else got to say their good-byes except for my mother and I. If only I could go back in time but I can not and so I struggle to move forward.
A few weeks ago I went to a psychic after loosing my job hoping she would tell me words that there were better things in my future to help me through the trying times ahead. Well that was my hope. Towards the end, she had me feeling more depressed and hopeless and tried to get me as a client. But towards the beginning, I felt she was very accurate and truthful picking up on many things there is no way she could have known. One thing she picked up on was that I recently suffered a loss from someone close to me. She then went on to say that it happened very quickly and it was not supposed to happen that way. She also mentioned that there were words left unsaid and that this person tries to come to me from time to time in dreams and tell me things, yet I never pick up on it or understand what they are trying to tell me at the time. And so I say again….Oh how I wish the others in my dream were not making so much noise so that I could have heard the words my father was trying to whisper in my ears.
I finally worked up the nerve to go to the cemetery the other day. It was a very emotional day for me- almost as if 5 months of trying to hold everything in had hit me at once. I brought my father some roses too. You see my father was ill for some time and he knew he was very sick. He had watched his mother pass away of complications of liver disease when he was 19 years of age. My grandmother who I never met died at the age of 58. Sad as it sounds, my fathers messed up desire out of life was to at least live to the age of 58 so that he could at least say he outlived his mother. It saddens me that he got his wish. As a matter of fact, shortly after he turned 58 last July is when his health started to take a rapid decline. I had noticed a difference in his health and a significant reduction in his weight from May when I moved back home to September. I recall one day he came home from work and I looked up at him and his face was sunken in and he looked sickly and frightening. But after he turned 58 is when his health really started to decline at a rapid rate.
About 2 or maybe 3 years ago my father ordered about 15 or 20 rose bushes. I remember my mother cursing him all summer as she had to dig holes and figure out where to put them all. “Why the hell did you order so many rose bushes?” she would yell at him. Our neighbor had a beautiful rose garden behind their house and my father thought it was the most beautiful thing. He wanted a rose garden of his own, but not for the sheer pleasure of having a rose garden in the yard. He told my mother that he ordered so many roses so that she could plant a garden to remember him by when he was gone. And each summer when they bloomed, we would all think of him as we saw the beautiful roses come up.
Well never in a million years did I imagine that this past week, I would be walking through the yard with a pair of scissors cutting down those very roses he wanted planted in his memory prior to him even passing so that I could now bring them to his gravesite. I cut a few down and I mixed them with a few other flowers I had found around the yard. I went inside and wrapped them in drenched paper towels and wrapped them in aluminum foil and then headed to the cemetery to visit my father for a belated Father’s Day visit.
I don’t know why this trip of all trips hit me as hard as it did. Perhaps it was the flowers on the car seat and the fact I never thought I would really need them for this purpose. Perhaps it was because the fatherless Father’s Day was starting to hit me. Perhaps it is because my life is completely off track, I have no idea how to get it where it needs to be and I am a bit disappointed that he did not do a better job looking out for me. Perhaps it was going through the past five months in a surreal state- only it is real, he is gone and never coming back. I have no idea, but I cried hysterically the entire way to the cemetery. I started having an anxiety attack and then hyperventilating on the Expressway. To be honest, I am not even sure how I drove like that or how I did not end up in the crypt under him. All I know is I got there.
I walked up to my father’s crypt with the roses in one hand and a box of Kleenex in the other. It was hot out- very, very hot. I put the roses on the ground near him and then I sat on the bench in front of his wall. I rested the box of Kleenex to my side and as the sun baked my back and shoulders that were sticking out of my tank top, I sat there hysterical crying. I could feel that my skin was starting to burn, but I did not care, I needed to be there. I needed to be with my dad and talk to him. For the record and to add a bit of levity to the situation, he did not really say much in return, but I talked to him hoping that somewhere out there he would hear me.
To be honest, I only remember parts of what I had to say. I told him that mom was lonely and missed him. I told him that my brother is getting married in 3 months and he was supposed to be here. I told him that he saw my life fall apart and he was supposed to be here to watch me pull it back together again. I told him that I am trying to rebuild but obviously I am not doing a good job and he is of no help. I joked that he could put a little more effort into that project. I told him that I kept in contact with my aunt from time to time and that we tried, but she wants to be in her own little world and feel sorry for herself and I am just trying to stay positive as much as I can. I told him I had a new boyfriend that came with us to the cemetery the day we visited after the Liver Walk. I then went on to say he most likely would not like him anyway as my father didn’t seem to like anybody. But I told my father that he was a good person and he treated me very well and that’s what counts. I told him my sister was brainwashed by her husband and walking out on their house and God only knows what they are doing.
From here I went on to tell him that I loved him and I missed him. I just wish he would have been a better communicator or told me that he was proud of me for once in my life. He always made me feel like such a disappointment- he made all of us feel that way. I told him that he got to say good bye to everyone and that I made sure my sister got to speak to him in the ER before she got on a plane, but that my mother and I never really got a chance to say good bye. I told him that I sat beside him and spoke with him but I don’t even know if he heard me that day. I reminded him that he once said I was invaluable and thanked me for my help and then before I left for the day, I asked him if he could please return the favor and help me this time. I asked him to help me find direction in my life and to help me find a good job and to land on my feet.
And while it was merely a dream, Oh how I wish I heard the words he was trying to whisper in my ear before he had passed- perhaps they were the words left unsaid when he died for real.
I would say this is the third dream I have had with my father in it since he has passed. None of them make any sense. The first was of my father sitting in the dinning room. He started to tell me that my ex is in deep trouble. As he put it, “You would not believe the kind of shit he is involved in.” My father then went on to tell me that he had gotten married. At this point I said, “WHAT? How the hell did he get married if we are not even technically divorced yet?” To this my father shrugged his shoulders and said, “I have no idea but he managed to find a way. Of course it is not technically legal, but he did it.” I was asking him more questions when my mother who was watering her plants on the windowsill had interrupted our conversation to say, “How the hell did he even get married, you are not divorced yet?” I began telling my mother that I had asked the same question and as she began to ramble on some more, I told her to be quiet as I was trying to listen to what Dad had to say. As I turned back to tell him to continue, he was gone.
The second dream that I can recall happened when I was away in Rhode Island. It was an odd dream and I only recall a brief portion of it. I was in the yard and I saw a tornado coming so I ran into the house. I began telling everyone to open the windows. I called a time as a child when Hurricane Gloria hit and we cracked all the windows just a tad to equalize the pressure in the house so the roof did not pop off or something. So here I am years later in a dream running around telling everyone to open the windows. As I am running through the house I ask, “Are you supposed to open them or close them…. I think they are supposed to be opened.” As I was frantically passing by the living room, I recalled seeing my father sitting in his chair watching me and he said in that, what are you stupid tone of voice that he often used- “Open- everyone knows you open them not close them.” So I began scurrying around the house trying to get the window open and everyone to safety. I have absolutely no idea why I was having this dream let alone why my father was watching me figure out how to equalize the pressure in the houses, but he was there nonetheless. Now the strange part about all this is that it was a short dream to my recollection and an odd one so I had forgotten it until breakfast that morning when my brother told me he had seen on the news that there was a tornado warning for Newport, RI and he did not think driving there to see the mansions was such a good idea. I mean what are the odds that I have a dream with my father, and impending tornado and an actual tornado warning for the town I happen to be at while on a long weekend away from home?
On to dream three which took place last night/ this morning. I recall that I was fishing with my father and my family. It was the 5 of us and we were all taking turns catching fish. As usual when it was my father’s turn, he did not catch anything and made this face he often did when he was disappointed or jealous that someone else had caught a fish or a bigger fish when he was striking out. In the end, he did end up catching one and had a big smile and a look of excitement about him even though I only saw him from the back or the side profile.
Now what is weird about this dream is that we were not on a boat at all and certainly not on his boat. The person fishing you could tell was raised up from the water almost as if they had been sitting in the fighting chair. You saw the pole and the person reeling in the fish. You could see someone stepping on the fish once it was reeled in to try and release the hook, but there was no boat that I recall- or perhaps there was at first. I saw the waves and the wake in my dream where the line had been cast as would be the case on the ocean where the engines cut through the water, but again, we were not on a boat and not on the ocean. I remember that there was only one fighting chair and so we all had to take turns. When one person would catch a fish, we would switch positions and the other 4 of us would entertain ourselves. The entertainment came in the form of swirling around a giant Olympic sized swimming pool with giant balloons that we were hanging onto. That’s right- we were not fishing on the ocean or on a lake, but in a giant swimming pool. Despite the fact I knew with absolute certainty that we were in a pool, the water was not crystal clear – it was a dark color as would be the case in the ocean of the Atlantic not too far off shore.
One person fished at a time from this imaginary fighting chair. There was a first mate who was baiting the hook and removing the fish but I never saw his face, I just knew he was there to help. There was a wake or a drag from where the imaginary boat engine had been cutting through the dark ocean waters of this swimming pool and in the back where 4 of us waiting our turn being dragged around in circles by ropes on large balloons or buoy balls as if we were tubing from the back of a race boat. As I said, the entire dream was odd, but it continued to get more so from what I can remember.
I believe that my father caught the last fish and it was his turn to ride the balloons around in circles while someone else fished. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves but it appears that all the water and swirling around had made my father a bit ill. The next thing I recall was him standing up and hunching over. He was throwing up and I was nervous it would be blood. My mother was all the sudden standing there and we went from this deep pool to very shallow waters where we could stand and it was only ankle or shin deep. As I was holding up my father saying, “What’s the matter are you going to throw up?” he did in fact start to vomit. My mother started instructing me to have him throw up on the stairs. I shifted my angle some to look up a tad and noticed a steep staircase. They were not your typical pool stairs, but the kind you might see in the back area of a supermarket or in an office building leading up to the next level.
I began taking my father up the stairs. I put his arm around my shoulder and my shoulder was in his armpit as I helped boost him up each step as I had done many a times before when he was ill. The next thing you know we were heading down a flight of stairs and my shoulder in his armpit and my other arm around his waist acted as a brace of sorts so that he could lean on me without having to worry about tumbling down the steps. The entire stair climbing incident reminded me very much of his last few days when he was too weak to climb the stairs at home and I all but had to carry him down in the morning and help him up to bed in the evening.
The next thing you know, we were at the bottom of these stairs and we are standing in some hallway or corridor area. There is a door to our left and I am about to take him through it when I look back and see my sister and mother making their way down the steps. I propped my father up for a moment and covered him with a big brown robe my aunt had bought him that he unfortunately only wore once before his passing. I asked my mother to throw down our shoes so we did not get our feet dirty on the germy floor. I take it that behind that door was some medical facility or hospital. All the sudden I had shoes and I threw them down on the floor and helped my father lift one foot at a time. I saw his feet as clear as day. He had the most ugly toes and we used to joke that at times his toenails would get so long he could hang from a tree and swing from them. Well don’t you know it, in my dream, his big nasty big toe toenail got caught and I had to bend down to maneuver the sandals around the nails.
With sandals on and wrapped in a robe, I looked over at my father and he did not look well. I asked him, “Do you want us to take you to the hospital?” He did not answer as I know he knew that he needed to go there but did not want to go. He hated when we took him to the hospital in his final days. I just said to his non-reply, “We are going to take you to the hospital now.” As I looked up at him, all the sudden he looked very, very ill. His face was sunken in and a bit jaundice and waxy looking. His eyes were wide open and shimmered in the light but it was a blank stare of someone that was there physically, but not mentally. His eyes were big and black yet they appeared blurry and glossed over if that makes any sense. To tell you the truth, he looked as he did on his deathbed at the hospital. The last time I saw his eyes like that, I had to pull them closed after he had passed away.
As I stood there preparing to open the door to our left, my sister was running down the stairs with my father’s phone. He had a blackberry towards the end which he affectionately referred to as his BLUEberry, yet in the dream, my sister was carrying my father’s old Nextel phone that was work issued. She began saying it was some guy Steve from Newsday. I looked over at my father and knew he was too ill to take the call. I told my sister, “He can’t talk now he is very sick.” I am not sure if all the sudden my sister relayed a message, but it was as if I were hearing the conversation on the other end of the line. It appeared they wanted to check in and see how my father was doing. They also told my sister that when we were ready, they had prepared an obituary for him if we wanted to use it. Of course they would let us read it and approve it before hand but it was ready for print. This guy Steve also told us that they had an old photo of him from 1992 or 1993 where he was shooting a football game for them which they wanted to use unless we would rather use a different photo of our choosing. As my sister was relaying the message to me, I looked over and my father still had that blank stare on his face. He looked almost comatosed. I started talking to him and there was no reply. I tried to shake him a bit and then I broke down hysterical crying and grabbed him to hug him. It was too late, he appeared to be gone. My mother reached over to grab my sister and hug her- phone still in her hand. The two of them where hysterical crying as I stand there hugging my father. But wait……all the sudden a faint voice - a very faint voice. My father was not gone just yet, he had a brief moment where he tried to whisper something in my ear just before he was gone for good. I yelled out, “Quiet, he is trying to say something” but when I leaned over to ask him to repeat it, there was silence. This time he was gone and this is also where I woke up.
I know it is only a dream, but oh how I wish I was able to hear the message my father was trying so desperately to whisper in my ear. If only everyone else had not been making so much noise I could have heard him. You see when my father passed for real, I never go to say good-bye to him- at least not in a way that he could hear, understand and respond to me. Oh how I wish I had a chance to tell my father good-bye and have him tell me a few last words of wisdom before he passed. By the time I go to be alone with him in the hospital that cold night in January, he was non-responsive. The nurse thinks he had slipped into a coma a few hours before. Everyone else got to say their good-byes except for my mother and I. If only I could go back in time but I can not and so I struggle to move forward.
A few weeks ago I went to a psychic after loosing my job hoping she would tell me words that there were better things in my future to help me through the trying times ahead. Well that was my hope. Towards the end, she had me feeling more depressed and hopeless and tried to get me as a client. But towards the beginning, I felt she was very accurate and truthful picking up on many things there is no way she could have known. One thing she picked up on was that I recently suffered a loss from someone close to me. She then went on to say that it happened very quickly and it was not supposed to happen that way. She also mentioned that there were words left unsaid and that this person tries to come to me from time to time in dreams and tell me things, yet I never pick up on it or understand what they are trying to tell me at the time. And so I say again….Oh how I wish the others in my dream were not making so much noise so that I could have heard the words my father was trying to whisper in my ears.
I finally worked up the nerve to go to the cemetery the other day. It was a very emotional day for me- almost as if 5 months of trying to hold everything in had hit me at once. I brought my father some roses too. You see my father was ill for some time and he knew he was very sick. He had watched his mother pass away of complications of liver disease when he was 19 years of age. My grandmother who I never met died at the age of 58. Sad as it sounds, my fathers messed up desire out of life was to at least live to the age of 58 so that he could at least say he outlived his mother. It saddens me that he got his wish. As a matter of fact, shortly after he turned 58 last July is when his health started to take a rapid decline. I had noticed a difference in his health and a significant reduction in his weight from May when I moved back home to September. I recall one day he came home from work and I looked up at him and his face was sunken in and he looked sickly and frightening. But after he turned 58 is when his health really started to decline at a rapid rate.
About 2 or maybe 3 years ago my father ordered about 15 or 20 rose bushes. I remember my mother cursing him all summer as she had to dig holes and figure out where to put them all. “Why the hell did you order so many rose bushes?” she would yell at him. Our neighbor had a beautiful rose garden behind their house and my father thought it was the most beautiful thing. He wanted a rose garden of his own, but not for the sheer pleasure of having a rose garden in the yard. He told my mother that he ordered so many roses so that she could plant a garden to remember him by when he was gone. And each summer when they bloomed, we would all think of him as we saw the beautiful roses come up.
Well never in a million years did I imagine that this past week, I would be walking through the yard with a pair of scissors cutting down those very roses he wanted planted in his memory prior to him even passing so that I could now bring them to his gravesite. I cut a few down and I mixed them with a few other flowers I had found around the yard. I went inside and wrapped them in drenched paper towels and wrapped them in aluminum foil and then headed to the cemetery to visit my father for a belated Father’s Day visit.
I don’t know why this trip of all trips hit me as hard as it did. Perhaps it was the flowers on the car seat and the fact I never thought I would really need them for this purpose. Perhaps it was because the fatherless Father’s Day was starting to hit me. Perhaps it is because my life is completely off track, I have no idea how to get it where it needs to be and I am a bit disappointed that he did not do a better job looking out for me. Perhaps it was going through the past five months in a surreal state- only it is real, he is gone and never coming back. I have no idea, but I cried hysterically the entire way to the cemetery. I started having an anxiety attack and then hyperventilating on the Expressway. To be honest, I am not even sure how I drove like that or how I did not end up in the crypt under him. All I know is I got there.
I walked up to my father’s crypt with the roses in one hand and a box of Kleenex in the other. It was hot out- very, very hot. I put the roses on the ground near him and then I sat on the bench in front of his wall. I rested the box of Kleenex to my side and as the sun baked my back and shoulders that were sticking out of my tank top, I sat there hysterical crying. I could feel that my skin was starting to burn, but I did not care, I needed to be there. I needed to be with my dad and talk to him. For the record and to add a bit of levity to the situation, he did not really say much in return, but I talked to him hoping that somewhere out there he would hear me.
To be honest, I only remember parts of what I had to say. I told him that mom was lonely and missed him. I told him that my brother is getting married in 3 months and he was supposed to be here. I told him that he saw my life fall apart and he was supposed to be here to watch me pull it back together again. I told him that I am trying to rebuild but obviously I am not doing a good job and he is of no help. I joked that he could put a little more effort into that project. I told him that I kept in contact with my aunt from time to time and that we tried, but she wants to be in her own little world and feel sorry for herself and I am just trying to stay positive as much as I can. I told him I had a new boyfriend that came with us to the cemetery the day we visited after the Liver Walk. I then went on to say he most likely would not like him anyway as my father didn’t seem to like anybody. But I told my father that he was a good person and he treated me very well and that’s what counts. I told him my sister was brainwashed by her husband and walking out on their house and God only knows what they are doing.
From here I went on to tell him that I loved him and I missed him. I just wish he would have been a better communicator or told me that he was proud of me for once in my life. He always made me feel like such a disappointment- he made all of us feel that way. I told him that he got to say good bye to everyone and that I made sure my sister got to speak to him in the ER before she got on a plane, but that my mother and I never really got a chance to say good bye. I told him that I sat beside him and spoke with him but I don’t even know if he heard me that day. I reminded him that he once said I was invaluable and thanked me for my help and then before I left for the day, I asked him if he could please return the favor and help me this time. I asked him to help me find direction in my life and to help me find a good job and to land on my feet.
And while it was merely a dream, Oh how I wish I heard the words he was trying to whisper in my ear before he had passed- perhaps they were the words left unsaid when he died for real.
No comments:
Post a Comment