Sadness ahead.
Had a strange, sad dream this morning. In it my father was alive and it was my mother who had died. I was getting out of a school event of some type (even though I wasn't any younger than I am now), and Dad was picking me up in a little teal station waggon. This is odd as he hasn't driven a station waggon sicne he first dated and married my mom (and it was brown and its name was Sophie). Anyway, the dream started with me waiting for dad outside of a school-type building in a wierd circle drive that reminded me of the front of the old Glenwood Highschool, for those of you that know it. Dad drives up to get me, and I started loading my stuff into the back of the car. Something interesting came on the radio, and I just sat in the back and listened, and dad just sat in the front and listened, and never once told me to hurry up or get in the front so we could go. We just sat for several minutes listeneing to the radio, stairing off into space. Finally I came to my senses and got out of the back and into the front passenger seat. Dad and I were both cramped into the front of this tiny little station waggon, and I asked if maybe we should get going, and dad kinda came back to himself and started the engine back up. Then he told me that since mom had died he didn't really know what to do with himself in the evenings, that in the last few years the house and the domestic stuff had been her sphere, and now he felt lost in it without her. He said that everything that he used to do in terms of going out and seeing and doing things he'd done for her, and now he didn't know what to do. And I felt this swell of enthusiasm - the same enthusiasm that I've nurtured for all the things that mom and I can do together now - and I started telling dad that things didn't have to be aweful, we could find things to do, we could go out to dinner together every week and talk, I could introduce him to my friends. We could spend time together, just he and I, and go places together like the three of us used to do, and good things could come from this if we'd just give it a chance. And it was about then that I realized that I was dreaming, and none of those things would be possible, because it was dad that was gone and not mom. And when I realized I wasn't really sitting in the car with my father, I started crying, really crying, which I hadn't really done yet. And then I woke up, and my face was wet because the tears were real, even if the dream wasn't. I am glad that my mother is not dead. But I guess I got a glimps of what might have been possible had things gone the other way... I knew that sadness would come knocking at some point. But I guess it's good in its own way. It's good to be reminded once in a while of how much you loved someone who's gone and deserves to be remembered.