Dad in My Dreams

I had my Dad in my dreams last night... He's been dead these 14 years.

My Dad, strong and Jack Kennedy handsome; played minor league baseball. My Dad, WWII vet who landed in the second wave at Normandy, never ever talked about his experiences there except in the most general terms. My Dad, with his high school education, read voraciously and could discuss nearly any topic -- he was one of the brightest men I've ever known. My Dad, who was shaped by the Depression, worked his whole life to make a life that was secure and sure; who waited for the time when he and my mother might retire and finally "enjoy" life -- who by the time he reached that promised day was so debilitated by the rheumatoid arthritis that finally killed him, couldn't enjoy anything much at all...

In my dreams last night there were two copies of my Dad. One for whom I waited in some sort of odd bus depot style surgery center, where patients were picked up at the "ticket counter," transported by ambulance to the surgical site, and returned to the waiting area when they were "done." The other Dad was there in the waiting room with me, well, and strong, and whole... The surgical patient Dad got suddenly dropped off, post-surgically, all dressed in clothes I remember him wearing quite often, seeming quite disoriented and very unsteady. The second Dad and I rushed out to him and helped support him into the waiting room and into a chair so that he could rest and recover his bearings... It all seemed quite matter of fact to me.

Dad was the hero and antagonist of my youth. He raised me on liberal, union-organizer politics, but then couldn't understand why I sympathized with the hippies that sprouted all over The Hill on the CU campus in Boulder, or why I insisted that it was only my too late February birthday that would keep me from voting for Eugene McCarthy in the election the year I turned 18. He taught me to hold a baseball bat, throw and catch a football, and cast a fishing line, insisted I attend an engineering college rather than a teachers' college, and yet couldn't fathom my feminist leanings. He read me bedtime stories, cleaned up vomit when I was ill as a child, and chased the nightmare spiders from my bed, and never ever once stopped my mother's abusive predations... He was and remains an absolute enigma...

He was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was in junior high school. I watched it take him apart piece by piece by piece. I saw him come home the day of the diagnosis, sit down in his rocking chair and decide that his life was over. My Dad taught me many, many things, but the most important, most lasting lesson he ever taught me is this -- life is precious and life is too damn short to waste it waiting for it to happen. It happens while we are planning it, while we are hoping for it, while we are wishing for the better opportunity. Life is for now. We are life, and joy and breath and love are here for the taking.

I don't know for sure what Dad #1 and Dad #2 were all about last night. I'd like to believe that the one who was there to help was intended as assurance that I'll always have the strength that I'll need for whatever comes, and that I've made the right choice in seizing the life that is here before me now. I feel like that is what He came to tell me last night.

swan