Thursday night I had a bad dream about Greg. I was in a Starbucks and there were some people there that I knew. I was in a very long line and talking to someone I hadn't seen in a few years, and I looked over that guy's shoulder and there was Greg, across the Starbucks and standing near a table. He looked kind of sick but was upright and not too thin, standing there with one of those surgical masks across his face but in regular clothes and scanning the room. A million feelings rushed through me at once and I absurdly said to this acquaintance, "Do you want to meet my dad? He's dead, actually, but he's standing right over there..." He just stared at me, so I said, "No worries, I'm just going to excuse myself though because I haven't talked to him in a few years and there's some catching up to do." I started to walk away and ____ grabbed my arm, started asking me if I wanted to sit down and what was I having to drink because we'd both been in line for a long time and were finally near the register. I tried to pull away and that's where it all got ugly. I don't remember the rest of the dream vividly, except that at one point I was distraught, with people crowding around me and trying to force me to sit down, and I tried desperately over and over to explain that I needed to get to my dad, he was just over there and I hadn't seen him in SIX years and especially he was DEAD, so I really needed to just go talk to him for a minute. Of course no one else could see him. They thought they were being good Samaritans and protecting me in my grief. Really, they were keeping me from an unknown and unimagined opportunity.
The boychiks have been naughty felines of late, and my sleep hasn't been good. I don't know what to make of that dream, except that I'm always grateful to see Greg, even in a dream, even in a lousy Starbucks.
The dream world is a strange one, and I've been a restless inhabitant for many years. One of my very close friends lost her dad a few weeks ago.- without telling all her business, there were parallels and it was hard. I wanted to console her but I knew better than probably anybody how fucking shitty she was feeling. We sat in her backyard the day after, and the sun was shining, and she asked me about a conversation with her dad, a conversation that as it happened I had also had with Greg. Our dads were both artists (writer, musician) with artists' souls and demeanor. The conversation was about being part of a small special tribe, artists with intense feelings and thin shells. We feel it all and we feel it so very much, and our dads both knew how it was a gift and a hardship. But they both encouraged us to never stop feeling EVERYTHING, because our depths of despair will be matched by dizzying love that many people will never feel in all that burning, gasping glory. We loved our dads, and they loved us, and they did the best they could and were gone too soon.
6 years farther along the path and I couldn't really tell my friend a bunch of bullshit about feeling better because we know each other too well and we're too much alike. I could say, The raw moments will get fewer and farther between, but they'll still come over you like black dogs barking and you'll feel helpless and hurting until they fade again. I could say, Try not to play the game with yourself where if you just act really REALLY good, he'll come back from this extended vacation called death, cause I played that game too long and he ain't coming back.......unless the seventh year holds a BIG surprise for me (kidding!). I can't really say it gets better, but it does get farther away. Probably the only thing I could tell my friend that would be both helpful and true is this- the bad parts fade first. The hospital scene and struggle and guilt will dissipate. The love and gratitude will remain.
I wrote in another post about leprechaun money in Greg's office. When my cousin got married in September, the aisle was strewn with leprechaun pennies from LA. My precious creative aunt made my cousin and I these bracelets; pennies from heaven...
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