Dreamt of Dad again last night. Brief but powerful – in the dream I was picturing him at last year’s Christmas dinner – his last here with us, and one where he wasn’t quite aware of what was going on. His look in the photos from that night is distant and unfocused, slightly unsettled too – and I wept for the long battle with his illness, and how it had robbed all of us of so much. The scene shifted, as dreams do, and suddenly I was sitting on the edge of my current bed next to him, and I rushed to hug him. “Daddy I love you…” I cried like a little child (because I have not referred to my father as ‘Daddy’ in decades), sobbing through tears again, shaking and half-waking myself. “I love you so much…” I repeated, and then his arms were hugging me back and I heard him say, “I love you too” in a soft voice.
I woke up, face streaming with tears. Looked at the clock and it read 4:44.
Perhaps early morning is the time he likes visit. It’s a time I remember from my youth, on those nights when I’d crawl into my parents’ bed unable to sleep for fear or terror of some unnamed worry, and in the earliest stirring of the day, my father would sometimes get up to use the bathroom, and I’d sleepily see him coming back to bed in the grey shadows of a day barely begun.
On this morning, all these years later, I walk out into the dark living room and sit on the couch to prolong the moment. It is at such a time that I feel my Dad’s presence most keenly, and strangely, as it comes with such profound sadness, such powerful moments of missing him.
Maybe that’s all it is: my overwhelming grief providing the perfect combination of wanting and wishing that in these early hours it feels like he is here beside me.
And maybe it’s something more.
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