About five months ago, I dreamed that my father had ordered a bunch of nondescript raw materials in long, brown cardboard boxes. He was convinced that would resell them and make himself rich.
At some point, he decided that we (he, my daughter, and I) had to drive into Canada. “Dad,” I said, “I don’t have my passport. Or Lydia’s.” He did not have his either if he had one at all. He starts schmoozing with the border guard, while I’m filing through my wallet hoping that maybe I had SOME paperwork that would be satisfactory. The odd thing is that he described his granddaughter as his daughter.
Of course, as I’ve noted, my father and my daughter never met on this plane, though my daughter once told me that she DID meet my father, while she was up in heaven waiting to be born.
That said, much of the dream was basically true. He could drive a tractor-trailer, he always had get-rich schemes but was often lazy with the details, and he could often charm people.
It’s now 13 years since my dad died, and he’s still in my dreams.
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Coincidentally, back in October 2011, Melanie wrote about HER dad dying 13 years before. “Many people feel that’s long enough to be sad about it… It’s like we’re supposed to have some on/off switch on our biological clocks that automatically turns the hurt and the caring off after an acceptable number of hours, minutes, and seconds have passed. It’s not like that.”