In defence of the dead staying dead
...as much as I love you dad, get out my dreams pls
(not picking my nose FYI)
I’m being plagued by a new nightmare.
Well, less of a nightmare as such, more of a theatrical, bleaker-than-most dream. In it, I find my dad. The same dad – Jeff – who died of a rare type of head and neck cancer five days before my 13th birthday.
The sequence goes like this: Mum, my elder brother and I are either a) in a car, b) in some sort of tropical forest or c) running up and down the stairs of my childhood home, on the hunt for my long-lost father. At some point, mum whips round to announce she’s found him: he’s in the local hospital. In fact, that’s where he’s been all along! My brother and I eye-roll and sigh, as if we’d realised our sunglasses were on our heads (silly!) and escape the car/forest/stairs to rescue him. The next bit varies depending on the night.
Sometimes, he just smiles at me, or pushes his glasses back towards the bridge of his nose like I’d remembered. He might adjust his tie (one of many decorated with various Beatles members) or be marking an exam paper (he was an English teacher). Other times, he and mum are laughing in the same irritatingly harmonious way they used to while watching Have I Got News For You.
If I’m really, really lucky, I get a few sentences. I can never remember exactly what is said. And ever since I’ve started having this dream, I’ve found myself feeling more…unsure than usual. About everything. It’s a feeling of complete uncertainty, as if I am waiting for the final call about which sandwich to eat or savings account to deposit my life’s savings into.
I realised three nights a go, when I woke up with heart palpitations after being separated from my imaginary father, that I am, of course, waiting for his approval. What would he make of my decision to plaster my life all over the newspaper? Or of my failed relationship? Or how dutiful (or not) a daughter I am to my mum? Or of the delicious braised courgettes I made for dinner last night? It wasn’t until I was gifted a fleeting glimpse of him that I woke up to what I was missing.
I thought of this when I came across a story the other day, about the tech-entrepreneur Nick Hungerford, who has late stage bone cancer. Nick has a two year-old daughter, and is planning to put together an artificial intelligence website of videos of himself answering hundreds of questions that she’s bound to ask in the future. This way, she’ll be able to build up a ‘full’ picture of her father, he said. Granted this situation is different from mine. I am grateful to at least have some memories of my dad. I’ve read of terminally ill parents doing similar things over the years – memory boxes, writing messages for kids to open on their 16th, 18th, 21st birthdays. I never quite knew how I felt about this – until recently.
Ma + pa being cute in the ‘80s
For me anyway, the pain lies in the curiosity. I will never know my father as an adult man with experiences, talents, opinions, passions and flaws. I will only ever know him as a dad of two young teenagers. And my dad, at that. I will never know what he’d think of the current migrant crisis, Elon Musk and everyone suddenly enjoying the taste of nut milk. I don’t know if he’d approve on my choices, or if he’d even like me. And I guess seeing him these past few times, if only in my dreams, has exposed a longing I never knew I had. A smile, a laugh, an AI-powered video – they’ll never be enough. And they just leave you wanting more.
It sounds awful, but perhaps grief is more manageable when the person stays dead – and your life moves beyond them. Otherwise, it’s a life of wondering.
In the days after my dad died, I remember thinking: will there ever come a day when I don’t think about him? There did, of course, not too long afterwards. Since then, it’s come in phases. Sometimes – usually before a big event of some sort - I’ll spend a period of about a fortnight relentlessly gutted that he most likely won’t be making an appearance. Other times, like now, I have a subconscious ache for him, usually borne out of a desperate need for assurance that everything will be alright.
So, any tips for dream influencing are much welcome. Until then, I’ll try to enjoy my father’s kind and warm smile for what it is: a sweet, sweet fantasy.