I’ve been writing a story that involves many of my own personal memories and aspects from my own life. I have found the work very rewarding, but also very trying because I find myself facing demons from the past.
Last night I had a strange dream about my family. Most of the dream involved my mother and her current situation. At the end of the dream, I saw my father. He sat in a rocking chair in the kitchen of the house where I grew up. As he slept in this rocking chair, his muscles twitched as if he dreamt, and he mumbled words in his sleep. I walked up to him and touched his arm. As he woke up, I saw tears in his eyes. Before he passed away, I had never seen him cry in my entire life.
I asked him, “Dad, are you okay? Dad, what were you dreaming?”
Just as he opened his mouth to answer me, the alarm on my husband’s phone woke me up.
When I told my mom about the dream, she asked me if I dreamed about her. She didn’t care about my father. I have thought about what my unconscious mind could have been trying to tell me about my father.
The more I thought, the more I realized, it is a coincidence that just as he opened his mouth, the alarm went off. I’m not meant to know. I’ve been writing about that lesson for quite some time now. I’m not meant to know what the dream really was and to be honest, I’m not sure that’s the important part. I saw my father even though he died eight years ago. I touched his arm and looked into his eyes. He sat next to a window and sunlight shone on his face.
I felt at peace to see him for just a minute. His eyes really got to me because when I saw him, his body and face looked like an eighty-year-old man, but when I look into his eyes, I saw the eyes of a young man. I can’t help wondering if I got a glimpse of how God sees one of us. When He looks at one of us, he can see us at all the times of our lives.
I don’t know what my dad had been dreaming. I don’t know what the dream meant, if anything. I would like to believe that somehow, my father is okay. I’d like to believe that wherever and whenever he is, he knows that he is loved.
I used to hate it that my dad never wanted to talk to me about anything really serious or meaningful. Then, I stopped wanting to talk to him because of his verbal abuse. We never did get a chance to ever have a real heart to heart discussion about anything meaningful. Yet, as I sit here tonight writing about this dream, I realize that I couldn’t make him be someone he wasn’t. I couldn’t make him do something that he didn’t want to do. Even if I didn’t understand him, I should have done more to accept him as he was. I didn’t know my father’s mind, but I could have tried to accept him more anyway.
Maybe he wasn’t the greatest dad in the world, but he loved me, and he taught me so many things about life that I needed to know. And now, even after he has passed away, he is still teaching me about loving and accepting people where they are at. Tonight, I pray in thanksgiving for my father. God gave me someone who taught me to trust in God’s plan even when I didn’t understand. He gave me someone who taught me about the Serenity prayer so that I would learn that I can’t control other people and try to manipulate them. May my father rest in peace.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
