What Dreams May Come

Joe had a dream about Bill. He said, in fact, that he dreamed about him all night, so that when I woke him at 6am the first thing he said was that he’d been dreaming about his dad, which made me feel bad for him, that he had to leave his dad to wake up.

Later, during the evening, I was with him as he recounted the dream not once, but three more times. With each retelling I thought to myself, “I don’t want to have to listen to this again.”
I was there when he told it to his grandmother. And I was putting away groceries while he sat at the table and told it again, this time to Bailey.
They'd gone to a movie, Dad and the three kids who currently live at home. “It wasn’t a particular theater,” Joe said. “It was every theater we'd ever gone to with dad.” And then he said they'd watched a movie, a good one. Afterward, Jake and Bailey went off with other people but Joe didn’t want to leave Bill; the two of them wanted another movie. So they sneaked into another theater without paying. “I don’t want to dole out more money,” Bill had said (so true to life), so they ducked inside another showing and hid amongst the paying customers. Somehow, Joe dreamed, theater employees had caught wind of their scheme and came into the theater looking for the culprits, but Joe and Bill played it cool. They knew how to act cavalier, not get caught. And they didn’t.
“And then I woke up,” Joe said. “I was so mad I had to pee because I just wanted to stay there.”

Bailey asked if she’d told us her latest dad dream. We shook our heads and paused to listen. “We were on a bus going someplace,” she said. “And everybody was getting off the bus, and I was walking to the front and the bus driver looked up and it was Dad.”
He used to drive a bus, back in the early 90s. It’s where he worked when he was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
“I started screaming,” she said. “I wanted to tell everybody it was my dad. And I fell into his lap and was crying and screaming and yelling to everyone that it was my dad, but no one listened. And he just sat there.”

I’ve dreamed him too. He’ll crop up in unexpected places. I thought I’d dreamed him out, but now that he’s gone in flesh he’s resurfaced other places. And although his presence is no longer real, when he appears it kicks like a mule in the gut. I cannot fathom, most days, that he is gone. That I am on this kid-raising journey without him. No back up. No co-cheerleader. No one to tell me I’m not crazy for getting pissed at a teacher for shoving my son unprovoked. No one to puff up with pride when one or another of these kids does something right, or good.

Sure we keep him here in heart and mind. But he’s gone. Without a trace. Life has changed, and there’s no putting it back like it was, even if how it was was aggravating and broken and screwed up.

I think about him lying in bed that Sunday morning. I wonder what he was dreaming. I wonder if his last dream was of his kids, or of us when we were kids, first married. I don’t know. And when he was shocked from sleep by the shutdown of his body, and then ushered into unconsciousness before he could even speak, I wonder what he thought. I think his first thought was, “Oh shit, somebody help me.” And when he realized for a few conscious moments that help was not enough, I think he put his mind on his children. He put it there, and kept it there for his last cognizant moments, and then when his mind released from his body I believe he locked it onto them and that’s where it has stayed.

I just wish he could come back and tell them it will be okay, that they’ll get through this. I suspect he wishes he could too. One of these days, when I enter my afterlife, I’ll seek him out, and we’ll talk about it. I’ll tell him my version; he’ll tell me his, and we’ll shake our heads in disbelief. We survived so many ordeals on earth, but we always had each other to share them with. “You won’t believe this one…” we might begin. But his death has been horribly lopsided; I haven’t had him here to tell it, and some days that’s all I want to do. “You won’t believe what happened,” I'd say, because he probably wouldn’t. He'd be just as bowled over by it as we are.

But wherever he is, I hope his mind is on these kids, and  I hope that when they dream him into their sleep-world existence that it’s for real. I hope it's really him. And that he’s okay, and he’s keeping watch over them. 

Comments

[Pixie]

You know -just today Steph said "I can't believe Bill died " me neither -- so unreal, even now
I am sure he knows -- I am sure the man is in heaven I would miss the cheerleading for those wonderful kids

[Bailey Fitch]

Mom I somehow stumbled onto this. I dont get on here often but i did, and I found this. I love your writing and although it is all really good stuff, this one hit a nerve. This piece moved me in a way the others haven't. I feel like as the weeks and months go by and as conversations and memories surface your life with Dad is uncovered. Maybe it's myself that is changing and maturing that helps to better understand the life you have lived or maybe it's that I havent payed enough attention. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I am understanding that this hurts for you too. Maybe more than you yourslef even understand. I see Dad is more than just my father to you. He was a lifetime. A book from start to finish and an equation with a result..us.

I love you Mom.

And I have a certain pain that I get in the pit of my stomoach when I realize how important you are to me and how I litteraly would not know how to live without you in my life. If there is any kind of positive that can come from the death of Dad, it is to show me how to really love. It is to show me that fellings are always better shared. It is that death, or bad, is only one end of the spectrum.

You are my life, and you are my good.

[Shari]

Oh wow, tears are streaming from this post and Bailey's comment. You guys are amazing. I'm going to go and hold my husband and my daughter close to me right now.