Dreams
Sometimes E will tell me about his dreams and they will be elaborate science fiction adventures, filled with action sequences and celebrity guest stars. By comparison, my dreams tend towards realistic fiction, and are often pretty mundane.
It's actually kind of amusing sometimes, just how un-subtle my subconscious is. If I'm concerned about something, I don't tend to dream about it in metaphorical terms. My sleeping mind just plays out the exact situation I've been thinking about in my waking life. There's very little to interpret in my dreams because the scenarios are so straightforward. I regularly have those dreams where you wake up and start living your day, and then when I actually wake up, I have to do it all over again. Didn't I already take a shower and eat breakfast and bike to my doctor's appointment? I have to do it for real now? Fine.
Last week, I dreamed about my dad, which I hadn't done in a while. Well, actually, I dreamed about my hometown and some people I knew in high school were there. They were dressed in tuxedos and I think I was supposed to dress up too and attend some sort of party, but the specifics don't really matter. The feel of the dream was intense busyness. I had a lot to do around town (preparing for the party?) and I was supposed to go see my dad that evening, but there was so much to get done that I never made it to visit him.
That's it. That's the whole dream. I say I had a dream about my dad, but he wasn't even in the dang dream because of course he wasn't because he died in 2011 and my subconscious is not subtle. I say I had a dream about my dad, but really I had a dream about feeling guilty for not visiting my dad more often while he was alive. I had a dream about getting swept up in busyness instead of prioritizing meaningful relationships, which feels thematically appropriate for Advent, and exceptionally on the nose.
When I have dreamed about my dad in the decade since he passed away, it is usually like this. I don't have dreams about him being alive and us hanging out together, going on elaborate science fiction adventures, filled with action sequences and celebrity guest stars. In my dreams, if my dad is alive and present, instead of just an idea off-screen, he is also always ill. If he walks anywhere in the dream, it is always with a limp.
I remember a dream I had in the months immediately after he died, where we were sitting together beside a swimming pool looking at our calendars and trying to figure out when we could attend a concert together. Not next month, because he would be dead then. Maybe the following month when he would be alive again? That was a strange dream to wake up from.
But it's not the only time I've dreamed about scheduling around my father's death. When he shows up in my dreams, there's always an awareness of his coming death. But it's not the awareness of his coming death that we had when he was sick with terminal cancer. It's not that waiting and watching him waste away and wishing we had more time while also hoping for it to end that I actually lived through. Instead, it's an awareness of the exact day that he will die, which allows us to plan our time together meaningfully before then. It's actually... strangely comforting.
If I can't dream an alternate reality where he's well and we fly spaceships together, I will settle for an alternate reality where he's alive and we know how much time we have left together.