The Nights
can be so long and so lonely. Sleep is hard to come by,
so I walk around every day in this fog. I keep hoping to see
my dad in my dreams. I ask him each night before I go
to sleep to come to me--to let me see him and know he's
ok. And I know I am seeing him, but I am forgetting. Just
little clips of his face surface in my dreams--just this running montage,
in which the faces of those I've known throughout my life, the living
and the dead, flashes around in my head reminding me of the old
Super 8 movies my mom filmed when I was a kid.
There is one dream I do remember from a few nights ago.
I was driving the Impala Mom and Dad bought when I was about
10 (think it was a 68). Aquamarine, 4 door, loaded. I can remember
(or I can remember a phot0) of all of us standing next to the car-
Mom in her uniform, hair in a chignon, smiling widely. I was driving
the car and saw my father standing in a yard with a playground
swing. Just one single playground swing. He had on a flannel shirt
and his khakis. I could see him watching me as I drove on past
him on way to the cemetery. The cemetery is the one I take
my walks in, but Dad is not buried there. It dawned on me in the dream
that I really needed to go and get Dad and that he was counting on me
to turn around and come back, so I turned around and just as I turned
the corner of the street, I saw him swinging as high as that swing
would go, and I remember thinking, "Hold on, Dad, I'm almost there."
Just then, as the swing was high in the air, his back to the sky and
the front of his body facing the ground, he let go and fell to the ground.
I watched his body crumple up like a rag doll, and he was lying there
motionless. I kept thinking, "Children fall off swings everyday--
he'll be alright," and then I kept hoping someone was going to come
and help Dad and I started to feel helpless. Then I woke up.
2 comments:
Well, this post makes me ache even more than that poem up above.
I've only seen my father in my dreams 3 times since his death and each time, I never saw his face, never talked to him, was only aware of his presence. Once he was fixing the toilet, another time staring into the fridge.
I have twice felt him inside me though....and I can't quite explain what I mean except to say that once when I was walking towards downtown Canton, and another time when I was driving my mother up to Cleveland to see relatives, I felt like I wasn't me anymore, that I was him. It was this incredible sense of calmness---my father was a very laid back guy--and I felt like my eyes could see much farther than normal. It was a very brief sensation but I swear, it was him.
My mother dreams about him often which is comforting to me. She says that in her dreams, they're always talking as they always did about everything and nothing. I'm glad that he's still alive in her dreams.
The pain is so raw, so visceral, some days so unbelievably consuming. I know, or at least I could sense, your great loss in the poems you would post about your dad on Melic. Until one knows this loss, one has no real idea what it feels like--no idea.
I have dreamed of my father on several occasions since his death in April, but I haven't felt him or seen him. When my sister was here for the funeral, she knows she saw him coming over the hill, walking toward the house. Dad has been unable to walk very well for the last 3 years or so (needed a total hip replacement--bone on bone), so walking was painful and he shuffled mostly, but she saw him walking, one foot in front of the other at an easy pace, toward the house. Mom says she's heard him and she's has some sensory experiences (house filled with the smell of flowers with all the windows shut and no flowers in the house), and she says she's felt him hold her back when she's wanted to get out his chair and go to another room, but I haven't experienced him like that. The first dream I had of him took place about a week after his burial. In the dream, he lifted the lid of his casket and looked at me with this,"Is it my time to perform?" face, and I woke with a smile on my face. He looked so much like a young child thrilled at the experience of playing a part in a movie or theatre production. Nothing about seeing him like that frightened me or saddened me. I just told him it wasn't his time yet, so he closed the lid and I woke up. There have been other dreams in which I have not seen him, but I hear him off to the side, just out of range from my peripheral vision. In one dream, I could see just his legs. They were wet with salt water ( I knew he had just gotten out of the ocean). I could see his bird tatoo on his right calf, and he said, "Tell your mom to stay where she is and that help is on the way. Tell her everything is going to be allright." I was within a foot of him, but I couldn't see anything other than his wet legs.
It's so hard for me to go to my mother's. I was close to Dad, but Mom and I have never had a relationship. I just can barely contain my emotions when I'm there, but somehow or the other, I make it through a visit with her. And my god, the pain I feel for her. She and Dad would have been married 50 years last month. 50 years with someone and then they are gone--whoosh--just like that--just like that.
Oh my. Another night to get through, and much going on right now. Father-in-law had a heart attack on Father's Day, a quadruple bypass two weeks later, and then last night an emergency surgery for a nasty infection (something similar to gangrene--really bad bacterium). The docs had to cut the incision in the left leg all the way open again from his thigh to his ankle. They have to leave it open to heal, so it's packed with gauze and wrapped with gauze. He may need the hyperbaric wound chamber--who knows. But he made it through the surgery--very, very high risk surgery, so we are hopeful.
Thanks for your comments, Laurel. Good to read you.
M
Post a Comment