March 19, 1982

March 19th, 1982. The day the world stood still. At least, for my 7 year old brain, anyway.

It was a sunny Friday afternoon and my friend was coming to my house after school, after homework. I walked home from school the usual way, cutting through the neighbor's yard behind us. Back then, most people in our town hadn't added fences to their yards yet. Daddy was waiting on the front lawn as he always was. Daddy worked two jobs and would come home for his lunch at the same time us kids got home from school just so he could see us every day. He loved his children beyond words and we always knew it. I gave him the usual big hug and we went inside.

As I was doing my 2nd grade math homework at the dining room table, I ran into some difficulty. Daddy was in the kitchen making his usual peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I walked into the kitchen to ask him for help with my math and daddy was laying on the floor. Well, he was propped up under the telephone that hung on the wall next to the back door. I was only seven so I really didn't understand why he would be doing that but he didn't answer me when I said his name. I went in to the living room where my mom was watching TV.

“Mom, why is Daddy lying on the floor?” I asked, not realizing that, to my mom, that was the scariest sentence in the English language. She stood up and ran into the kitchen yelling his name. “ED! ED, are you ok?! ED!”. The next little bit is a blur. The Fire Department was called. My oldest sister, who lived around the block, pulled up in front of the house with my nephew. Neighbors emerged from their houses. The fire truck and ambulance came. Just as they pulled up, my friend Meg came walking up to the house. I had to tell her that my Daddy was sick and she needed to go home. She understood. And honestly, I don't think I gave her another thought till after I went back to school.

After Daddy was taken away in the ambulance, I got into my sister, Margaret's car with my 6 year old nephew, Andrew and we went to the hospital. I remember Andrew and I waited in the hallway while my mom and Margaret talked to the doctor. After waiting for hours (it was only a few minutes, really, but hey, I was seven!), Margaret came out of the room and bent down to our level. She looked at us and told us that Daddy was dead, that he wouldn't be getting better. His heart just stopped and would never start again. I'm pretty sure the impact of that statement didn't actually hit until much later. I understood what death meant, but I never had to put it into the context of my own life before.

So that was the day the world stood still. The first time. There have been quite a few days like that since, I'm sad to say. But this is how it all started.

After Daddy died, life slowly got back into some kind of new normal. There was one time where the front yard of our home was dug up to hook the house up to the sewers. I could be wrong about the actual reason the giant hole was in the ground, but it's pretty irrelevant to the story. I came home from school one day, maybe a year or so after Daddy died. I cut through my neighbor's yard as usual. I ran around to the front of the house and totally forgot that the hole was there. This was way back in the early 80's when child safety, or any safety for that matter, wasn't as big a concern as it is today.

As I ran, I fell into the hole. I managed to catch the side and hang on, I am guessing it wasn't nearly as deep as I'd imagined, but I couldn't manage to pull myself up and out. I yelled, but I guess my mom never heard me. Thankfully, there was an older kid on a bicycle riding by and he heard me. He came over and lifted me out. Again, it felt like I was hanging there for hours. It was mostly likely only a minute or two. It didn't dawn on me until after I'd had a dream concerning this incident that this hole was in the exact spot Daddy used to wait for me to come home from school every day.

Dream - *** I was in the backyard playing with some kids. I can't remember who the kids were or what we were playing, but that's the way dreams go. Some details just aren't clear. I ran into the front yard and I saw Daddy waiting for me with his arms wide open ready for hugs. I ran towards him and all of the sudden, I fell into a giant hole. I hung on and screamed for Daddy but he was gone. I screamed for my mom. She was standing inside the front glass door with her arms folded and she was shaking her head in shame. I screamed for someone to help but no one came. And so I fell to the bottom of the hole. And all of the sudden, a tree grew up over the hole and the roots swallowed me up. And then I woke up.

It's pretty obvious why I had that type of dream. It doesn't take a dream specialist to figure it out. In fact, I don't really believe in any of that “pay lots of money for someone to tell you their own 'interpretation' of your dream” mumbo jumbo. But I admit it is fun to examine them and see what you can figure out from them. Sometimes, it's all about NOTHING. Sometimes, they're heavy and hold a lot of meaning in your life. This dream was pretty heavy, even though I was only 8.