I woke up this morning to sunshine and a little black cat at
my
feet, waiting for me to wake. I got up from a dream, like most of my
mornings lately, since my new medication started kicking in and
changing my scenery again; this time for the better. I dreamt that my
father died. Well, not quite. He died, but then he didn't die because
my mother was sitting in the dining
room at a very murky tablecloth
and not
talking to me at all about his possible death. Everyone was
talking, obviously, just not to me. So, logically, in the dream, I
couldn't hear them. He was in the hospital
again, and then I was in
my old room and even there everything was rotting and slowly fading
away. And then I was walking over to his bedroom and to his bed, but
I felt the vivid emptiness of a personal death, and I left. My
stepmother was calling. I was in their house, but it was furnished
like my grandmother's old rooms, and it was my mother who was running
the show. I woke up wondering why I didn't have a headache when I
certainly felt like one was appropriate.
My dad returned at the end of the dream, but like everything
unreal about it, he was murky, unfocused and distant. Like he was
fading too.
Sometimes I know for sure that these dreams come because I need my
father. I need him to live beyond his years, I need him to turn back
time and hold me, and I need him to never leave. He's old, sickly and
his hourglass seems almost invisible now, like the sand is long
gone
but the memory perseveres. I love him. I love him like I loved my
grandmother, like I loved the girl with the blonde hair and like I
love the Flying Dutchman. My
soul needs him to repair the damage that
countless years of trauma, neglect and abuse have left in my burned
out ruins and bloody castles, but he can't. Dad waged the entire war,
of which I was only a pawn; I won battles while he lost the siege.
Now the king is tired of his throne and his crown, but you can't have your
dragon daughter inherit the kingdom. It's too late to rewrite the
rules. We lost, dad.
I hope he's ok. The dream was terrifying.