-This was my first post on Medium, a new website that claims to make reading and writing easier, except that you need a Twitter account to do either. Fair enough. Fear not, my tweetless friends! I'll post my writing on here as well. -
This is not what I imagined I would
write about in my first post. I thought I would be writing about all the epiphanies
of being a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer looking for a job and finding
happiness in my hometown. Instead I am writing about my Dad. And grief.
Tomorrow would have been my Dad’s
82nd birthday. He passed away almost 10 years ago. I have never written
anything about him (aside from a small quote in my blog last year) or posted
anything about him on Facebook. He would roll over in his grave if I did that.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong when other people do it. There is no
right or wrong way to grieve. My favorite line in the movie We Are Marshall
is “Grief is messy.” I also find it inconvenient, surprising, and just weird.
Last night I dreamed about my Dad.
It started out with me reading an email that I had to fire several people. It
upset me, and I wanted to tell Mom. So, I walked through our front door where
she was standing outside on the sidewalk. She just looked at me, smiled, and
looked over to our side yard. There was my Dad, smiling, standing there in one
of his green plaid flannel shirts and Khakis. It was dark everywhere around
him, but he was standing in a beam of light. I stood on the porch in disbelief.
I knew he was dead; that this was fleeting and we all knew it. But I felt so
happy anyway that I walked over to him, wrapped my arms around his neck and
hugged him.
I woke myself up crying. For a
moment, I was disoriented and didn’t know where I was. It was 11:28. I sat up
in the middle of my bed and cried in the dark for five minutes. My senses were
heightened. I was acutely aware of how soft my skin felt as I wiped away my
tears, how my hair was falling around my face, and how the light from my cell
phone charger was glowing. Everything still felt so surreal. I just wanted to
be suspended in this moment as long as possible.
I felt so strongly drawn to go
outside and stand on the porch to look out in the side yard. I was hoping the
yard would be drenched in moonlight and I would find some sort of resolution,
closure, or comfort in it. But as I opened the door, reality hit me along with
the cold air as I saw how dark it was while the cat ran inside and I heard
something make a noise in the woods. I quickly stepped back inside and locked
the door behind me.
The lyrics “any other way”
from a Band of Horses song kept repeating in my dream. After I woke up,I knew I
had heard that song before and really liked it. So,this morning, I looked it up
and discovered it was “Detlef Schrempf”. The chorus says “My eyes can’t look
at you any other way. Any other way, any other way.” Maybe I didn’t want to
lose that moment in bed or hoped to find something in the yard because I didn’t
want to see Dad any other way or feel any other way. After all, it was so
beautiful, vivid, and powerful that it moved me to tears unconsciously.
Like so many times in the past, I
felt trapped alone with my grief. I had few outlets for it as it was almost
midnight. I didn’t want to wake up Mom and upset her. I thought about texting
my brother and sister, but I didn’t want them to wake up to something that
might ruin their day. I didn’t feel like being on the computer again, so I
jotted down all the details of my dream and everything I was feeling in my
notebook. I ate a bowl of cereal and finally fell asleep watching 30 Rock.
This morning I woke up and knew that
writing about it would be the perfect outlet. But, I still wasn’t sure if I
should share my dream with Mom as she was about to leave for work. As I laid on
the couch still tired from last night, I found myself telling her and thinking
I could do it without crying. I couldn’t, but she handled it like a pro. She
calmly said “maybe it’s an omen that something good is about to happen.”
I don’t know why I had that dream or
reacted as strongly as I did. I haven’t cried this hard about Dad in years. And
that’s OK. We can’t control when, why, or how grief will hit us, but we can
control how we pick ourselves up and move on. I could sit here all day listen
to Band of Horses over and over (as I already have while writing this) and go
through another roll of toilet paper blowing my nose and wiping away my tears.
But I have stuff to do, like a finding a job that will make me happy. Dad
wouldn’t want it any other way.
