I had a dream about my dad last night. It’s been nearly seven years since I last spoke with him. I can still remember the moment I got the phone call. My brother had a lump in his throat as he slowly proceeded to tell me our father had died.
Grief due to the loss of a loved one impacts us in different ways. For me, my emotions often feel temporarily suspended, as if on pause. They’re nearby, but not yet available to express.
I wasn’t quite ready for the news. Not only to accept the fact that he died, but what this would now mean for me. And for my family moving forward.
Just three weeks prior, my wife Naomi and I had gotten married. My dad had been planning to make the drive up to attend the wedding. With only a couple days remaining before our big day, he called to tell us he’d be unable to make it. He had a medical condition that was debilitating, and it had gotten worse. “Dad, what if I drive down to Pine Grove to pick you up? Or I could get you a flight out of Sacramento?” While he was grateful for my willingness, he didn’t feel he could do it. He assured me that we’d be able to connect in the future. Little did we know that the end of his life was already set in motion.
My dad never met my wife Naomi in person. They did, however, have opportunity to talk over the phone on one occasion. In that conversation, he had gotten a small glimpse into Naomi’s dry wit, intelligence, joy and love for his son. Likewise, Naomi had gotten a glimpse into his charm, sense of humor and fatherly sensibilities.
Life circumstances had kept us from making the drive or flight to California in the months prior to our wedding. While we had legitimate work and life demands, enormously so during that season of our courtship, I have often regretted not introducing him to the woman I would spend the rest of my life with.
After I heard the news of his death, I took a walk down the road from our place. I needed to be alone. To process. To think about my dad. To consider everything he meant to me. To grieve the fact that I would never have opportunity to see him again or introduce my wife to him. To grieve the fact that I had not visited him enough over the years. To grieve the impact of my parents’ divorce and growing up in a broken home. To grieve the loss of dad’s smile, laughter and personality. To grief the loss of his presence.
I texted my wife, who was on her way home from work, to tell her to meet me on the walk. When she arrived, I waited to tell her the news. I asked her if we could be quiet for a few minutes. She could tell something was up. We walked for some time without talking, and then finally I told her. “I just found out that my dad died.” The streams began to burst. I cried like I had never cried before.
His celebration of life service was filled with feelings of sadness and joy. We celebrated the life of man many loved and a man who loved many. My dad was good man. A man whose smile could brighten a whole room. Whose laughter was so contagious, it would cause you to laugh too. My dad was a complicated and imperfect man. Often misunderstood and lonely. He was prickly at times, even hard to be around. He was a man who suffered and was familiar with grief.
In one of the first moments of the dream I had last night, my wife, siblings and mother were all present in a house. A house I had never seen or been to before. Suddenly, the front door opened. To our great surprise, it was my father. He had taken the long drive from California to the northwest to see us. “Where is your car, dad?” speaking of the light gray Mercury Grand Marquis he had driven over the last 10 years? “I sold it.” In its place, he had driven up in a very small vehicle without a hood resembling a four-wheeler, which seemed almost unbelievable. I learned that he had spent nearly everything he had just to make the trip.
The drive was hard on his body. You could see it in the way he moved and talked. His smile came through, but it was visibly overshadowed by his pain. He was older. Broken. But he was now with us.
As dreams often do, I was taken to another scene later that day. He was talking on the phone with someone I didn’t know. They were discussing a business opportunity. He sounded determined and confident, but something felt off. I instinctively knew that he had very little money left. Was he being taking in for, conned out of every penny he had? I recalled that something like this had happened several times earlier in life.
I woke up shortly after that scene.
Why did I have this dream? And why did it end in this way?
There are times when our dreams may mean little or nothing at all. At other times, they reveal our deepest desires and remind us of sobering realities. Realities that a lived life is full of nuance and complexity and the tensions between love and loss, joy and sadness, hope and despair.
I have often wished I could see my dad again, and last night I was gifted that opportunity. How real it felt to see his face again, to be in his company together with my family. I was reminded too just how hard his life had been and likewise how hard my life had been growing up so often without him in it. I was reminded how he had been taken advantage of by so many, and yet, at times he too had taken advantage of others.
This is a sobering reality of a lived life. Even the life of a good man, a man like my father Walter.
