Dreams of Grief

I have been having dreams of my dad. He’s never in my dreams, you see. Perhaps in plot but rarely does show up as more than a blurred character. As in life, so in the dreaming world. Recently however, he’s been the main character. Odd indeed.

I was aiding him from room to room and at one point he fell, to which I threw myself dramatically underneath him to cushion the potentially fatal fall. We conversate in much the way he is now, riddled with Parkinson’s and age. His mood is dour and I am desperate to cheer him up. My father is a proud man and in his life at the tippy top of his accomplishments were his job and the home and life he provided for his family, a worthy sentiment. My eyes prickle with tears early on as I begin to remind him of these successes to which he mostly rejects. These are snapshots broken up and scattered, replaying from life, now shifting as we shuffle through dream logic doorways that are both there and not there.

What does cheer him up is the memory of my childhood trip to the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. It is a highlight for me too and watching him immediately brighten makes me smile. These conversations were emotional and the tears were now flowing heavily. I was mourning the man he was, appreciating the memory and knowing that he will indeed soon die. Living in the complicated depths of our relationship and wondering how he too might feel, we continue going— room to room.

Though the rooms are bright and contextual, they are mostly irrelevant, simply holding the shape of the scenes. From this, it was like we glitched in the matrix several times in a row; like someone rewinding the same part of a movie over and over again — and we were aware of it. This time it was not a memory and my father and I repeated falling to the ground as if we had been knocked over by a strong gust of wind without ever actually hitting the ground. Though the background is unimportant, we are placed outside an average townhouse with a closed garage door, classic ivy crawling up the mawkish tan archway. The dark pavement marked the sorry excuse for a driveway that could hold nothing more than a bike; and then us.

My last words to him were, “I think we’re ascending,” at which point we did begin to materialize into something else altogether. When I next looked at my father, he was a young version of himself, younger than I had ever seen him in person — a picture come to life. He glowed with a light and youthful energy, a wide smile and arms open towards me; his classic red bandanna tied around his head and an abundance of puffy brown hair.

As far as dreams go, it had me checking on my dad, to which I say he is doing fine. I have recently learned that my cat, the light of my life, has stage three lymphoma that insurance considers a pre-existing condition. While I have a very complicated relationship with my father, the one with my cat has been healing and unconditional, albeit short in its five years.

When last I lost a cat, she was my first cat and it nearly destroyed me. I made the mistake of letting her out and of course, one night she didn’t come home. I spent six months getting up in the middle of the night to search both mine and surrounding neighborhoods. Storms were the worst because of our human obsession with personification. Imagining her huddled under a bush in the rain wondering where I was, was the poison I injected straight into my own veins. The guiding light during that time was that at the point when I had lost all my friends and even my own brother, losing Elsie was more important than the irresponsible drama of humans. Though I am not grateful I lost her, without that, I do think it would have taken much longer in my life to blossom into reality.

Today I cannot help but find all of the things I am grateful for, this time around. Evie is not missing, nor is she is major pain. I have time with her and most of all, I know what I want to do when the time comes and I have her to do something with. I get to love her and even though I cannot believe she will be gone so much sooner than I would have wished, I am most grateful that it wasn’t something I caused.

Not long after Evie was diagnosed, the dreams started with my dad. It does not take a P.h.D to correlate the two. It’s crossed my mind if she got sick so they could die at the same time. If not, I have asked myself if I would cry— and if I did, who would it be for? Would it be for the happy memories of childhood that ultimately were just a show, or the childhood of eggshells and parent-child therapy roll-reversal for a parent who didn’t believe in mental health. Would I cry for a peace I feel my father was never able to attain within himself and the love he consistently told us we never really had for him, even before he got sick? Does he have peace now? Or would the tears be filled with relief, as I’d surmised back in high school? A harsh truth filled with far less forgiveness than I have now, but nonetheless, true.

Love is a complicated thing. It is expectations, of ourselves and of others without the benefit of genuine communication that destroys us. Reflection is key in mapping both your life and your emotions. Turns out our dreams can do that too.