Since my dad passed away I’ve been having dreams about him. They were more frequent right after he died and even though they keep happening, they’re more sparse. Even though dreaming about him and feeling like he’s still here is amazing, the waking up part and realizing it’s not real is the absolute worst.
Yesterday I dreamed that I was walking around a shopping mall and he was seating at a café. My first reaction was, it’s impossible! It’s probably a man that looks like him and dresses like him (he was dressed in office attire, my dad’s uniform haha), but soon I realized that it was indeed my dad. So I did what anyone would have done. I ran as fast as I could and hugged him.
It’s nice to see that my mind still remembers how it felt to hug him, because the hug in my dream felt 100% real. I asked him how it could be possible for him to be there if he was dead. He said he didn’t know anything about being dead, that he felt very much alive and surely I had dreamed it all.
I told him that it was impossible, I had seen his dead body in the mortuary, I went to his funeral, I had visited him in the cemetery. He looked confused and almost like he didn’t want to burst my bubble by telling me that he wasn’t really there, that I was dreaming.
That’s when I decided to believe him, to think that his death was just a bad dream, that I’d finally woken up. We went on a stroll, talked a bit and went to dinner to a nice restaurant. Mundane things that made me so happy just because he was there. That’s when my alarm went off.
My first thought was that I needed to go back to sleep, why did I have to wake up? I’d much rather spend the day with him in my dreams that living a reality I don’t like. Instead anxiety kicked in and here I am.
When someone asks me if I like dreaming about him the answer is always no. Even though the dreams are a chance for me to feel like he’s still here, they’re just an illusion and waking up feels like reliving his death over and over again.
All my love,
C.
Some Kind of Therapy 