This is a rather personal post. But I guess this is what Blogging is about. My Dad died almost half my life ago in 1988. We were not close. He had anger issues. If you ask my sisters and I each of us will say we each got the worst of it. But of course, I am sure I did. They had each other. They moved out and went to college when he got all ramped up on me. Please understand I go to great pains to be accurate in what I say. Which is to say, I will not lie or embellish here to make a good story. I don't have to, it wrote it's self.
So the past ten years or so I have had dreams about my dear old dad almost weekly. Never really good dreams. Many about me standing up to him, something I could not do in life but once. Persistent, relentless dreams about him. Which makes me ask the question, why do I keep dreaming about Dad?
Tonight was particularly disturbing. I had to watch him die. Again. But not the way I watched him die in 1988. The dream is already fading the way that dreams do, leaving only that imprint of discomfort of knowing that something bad happened. Like a car had rolled on your foot. The mark is there and the pain, but the car is clearly gone. In 88' he contracted brain cancer and died very quickly. I was a Paramedic and worked in Portland. I was the only one of the children that lived in Oregon and because of that had to deal with his medical and legal issues. I was 25 and not really prepared for something like this. But I thought at the time I was. I was ready for the medical end of it. If it had not been for me we may not have known it was cancer nearly as early as we did. That is a story for another time. But I was not ready to take on this responsibility alone and I was alone. My wife at the time had gone through her own fathers death several years before and was of little support to me. She even tried to convince me that since my Dad was unconscious there was no point in going down and seeing him every day. My mother was in the area but they had just gone through a five year very painful divorce. She was concerned but not to the degree we were.
And why were we? Relatives would say, "because he was a good man", Bull shit, you were not there. My sisters and I went through hell growing up. Ever had a hammer thrown at your head, or a (insert any tool), or an eight foot baseboard heater? Tossed down a flight of stairs? Stomped on by size 11 shoes with the feet in them because you were ten minutes late from telling the brick layer its time to wake up? (he, the brick layer, offered me coffee and told me stories about my dad and grandpa hunting in colorado. It was a great moment, till I walked back home.)
So you are most likely thinking, dude you need counseling. Done it, eight years worth. I wanted to make sure I was not like him and I am not. I do not yell or throw things. I have never hit my wife and never will. I am so not him. I have tried to look at other sides of him. Like his sense of humor. Which he had one. A pretty funny one. Not sure why he never brought it home, but he did have one. Me, my sisters and our children all have one. So I have accepted other parts of him other then the monster we all grew up with.
So why am I still dreaming about Dad. I am tired about this. I am tired of watching him die in a hundred different ways. I want to move on. So I guess in reading my post over again, is I haven't moved on. Well I am not going to solve it tonight.
Dad, go away. You died already. Get over it and move on.
