Hello, Grief, My Old Friend

While driving to Ohio this past weekend, I missed my dad.

It’s not that I don’t think about him a lot. It's just that life fills up so quickly that I can put the hollow part of my heart on a shelf and go about my day.  It waits for me (that hollow spot), knowing I will inevitably reach up, dust it off, and carry it around with me when the time is right.

The time was right as I was driving to Ohio this past weekend, and I missed my dad. I was tired; Skillet seemed like a good idea. When you’re sleepy, “Waking Up, Waking Up!” is a great stadium chant to sing in a car.  But metal mayhem gave way to a song I had not heard and did not expect:

“I went to bed - I was thinking about you

I wanna talk and laugh like we used to.

When I see you in my dreams at night

It's so real but it's in my mind,

And now I guess this is as good as it gets

Don't wake me, 'cause I don't wanna leave this dream

Don't wake me, 'cause I never seem to stay asleep enough

When it's you I'm dreaming of, I don't wanna wake up

These dreams of you keep on growing stronger

It ain't a lot but it's all I have.

Nothing to do but keep sleeping longer

Don't wanna stop 'cause I want You back."

"'Cause I want you back." I had dreams of my father for months after he died. I wish so desperately I could have them again (and yet I don’t – it’s exhausting to wake up sobbing). Grief is such a confusing mix of “I hate this” and “Please don't let me forget.”

Crying Yet Again

I woke crying early this morning. Again.

I awoke from a dream in which I had been talking with my mom.  In my dream, I turned and looked to the side and there was my Dad, just sitting next to me, looking at me and smiling slightly as if he were still alive and close. 

This was not like the dreams I have written about before where the veil between this world and the next seemed temporarily lifted so that I could have those final conversations with my father.  This was in many ways just an ordinary, bizarre dream:  I think I was in a desert, riding on a ski lift of up side of a mountain. 

Unlike those dreams that followed his burial so closely, I didn’t even try to talk with dad. I've had ten years to figure out that he is gone. I get it.  I sobbed while I talked to my mom steadily, knowing dad wasn’t there, and that he wasn’t real, and that I couldn’t talk to him, and that my life had to carry on in the worlds of both the sleeping and awake.  So glad to see him yet again, and so sad knowing it was for but a moment.

I didn’t look away until he disappeared from his desert ski lift seat, dissolving into distant memories as easily as he had appeared. I knew he would go, and that I would have to wake up, but it still broke my heart from start to finish. I never tried to touch him or talk to him.  I just...remembered him more poignantly than I usually do, and that was enough.  It had to be.

That’s why I woke up crying early this morning.

Someday, when I truly wake up, all the best dreams will be real. Comfort one another with these words.