I used to have a recurring dream about my father, many years after he died. In it, my aunt was taking me to a secret place where, it turned out, he wasn’t dead after all. He had been living incognito with distant relatives, she told me, an invalid all these years.
The recurring part of the dream was the drive, red-haired Aunt Babe at the wheel, explaining carefully that her brother wanted to see me before he died for real. I had this dream so often that I almost believed it during my waking hours. But I always woke up before we got there — until this time.
By now I was in my 30s. My father’s death, the summer I turned seven, hadn’t affected me much. I had never cried over the loss, and always felt a little odd when people seemed overly sympathetic years after the fact. I could barely remember him after all — why should I be sad?
This time, the dream was different.
I followed my aunt into a threadbare Minnesota farmhouse where the relatives — an ancient, solemn couple — silently gestured toward an alcove hidden by a curtain. I went in, and there was my father lying in an old metal bed under a worn, faded quilt. I sat on the bed beside him.
I had been excited to see him, but now I was shaking with rage.
“Why did you pretend to be dead?”
I thought of all the years without a father, with no one to teach me, no one to protect me. All the times I watched my friends with their dads and wondered idly how it felt. All the times I joked that I was lucky not to have to remember Father’s Day.
I realized with a start how desperately I had always needed my father.
“Why?” I demanded.
He looked bone tired, thin as a razor.
“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” he whispered.
I leaned over to hear him.
“I’m sorry,” my father said.
My anger melted, and I embraced my father for the first time in my memory. I had never felt so joyful. I didn’t want to let go, ever.
Then, I heard someone crying. I turned to see who it was — and woke up in my own bed, tears streaming down my temples to the pillow. My own sobs had awakened me.
No! I wanted to go back and hold my father longer, ask him questions, find out about his life, get to know him. But I couldn’t.
Try as I might, I never had that dream again.
It was a painful experience, but also very healing. I was able to grieve for my father at last. I had almost forgotten about him, and now I remembered details like the smell of his freshly-lit cigarette, how he carried me into a dark tavern where his friends made a fuss over me and called me Blondie, watching wide-eyed as he gave himself an insulin shot, the jar full of pennies he gave me at the hospital a week before he died.
My mother once told me that everybody liked my father. Before he got sick, he had been a fry cook at a popular diner in a busy area of St. Paul, and people came just to watch him flip burgers and make jokes. I like to think of him that way. Even his name fits:
Joe Lambert. My dad.
How do you like to think about your dad? Tell me in the comments, or write a blog post and link to it here. I’d love to hear about him.
