On death and dreams...

Last week it was three years since my father died. Mum remembered the date at 2.30pm, I thought about it about 4pm and my brother remembered at 4.30. Not sure what time my sister remembered but she rang Mum from the other side of the world that evening so probably earlier in the morning than the rest of us.

In my mind the grieving for Dad is tied in with the Rainbow Bridge poem - you know the one about animals waiting at the rainbow bridge for their special human to take them into heaven. We were all reasonably brave when Dad died, he was 7 weeks in Intensive Care and it was in the end a family decision to turn off the life support on him (on the doctors recommendations). After that long I think we were as a family fairly braced for the inevitable. So we coped with only minor outbreaks of tears. (remind me to tell you the mistress story sometime too...). Some months before Dad died we lost our 18 year old cat, (that's got bugger all to do with it you say :-)) and a few weeks after Dad died I was emailing an old friend and when she enquired after Sasha and I replied she had died she sent me the Rainbow Bridge poem. I had read it before but I was reading it again and I had a vision of Dad going to heaven and at the Rainbow Bridge collecting the pony he'd had as a kid, his working dog, and the cat that he always professed to hate but used to fuss over when he thought no one was looking. So I'm sitting at work bawling my eyes out, luckily it was just about knock off time, and I cried all the way home, and most of the evening - to the consternation of my nearest and dearest. And after that of course it got better.

Anyway - Mum was saying last week that when she dreams Dad is always in the dreams alive and well. And my sister had a dream that she was at some event, garden party type thing and Dad was there. She said to him "But I thought you were dead" and he replied "Yes everyone thought that but I wasn't".

So my dream last week was a bit different. I went into this cafe - it bore a fairly close resemblence to one in town - and Dad was sitting at a table. I wasn't at all surprised to see him there. He said "I've been waiting for you - your coffee is nearly cold and I've eaten most of your banana cake" and I said "that's okay because I wanted carrot cake anyway" so I sat down and drank lukewarm coffee. Then he said "It's about time you showed up Dixie is waiting for you." Dixie was the horse I owned as a teenager. I said "But Dixie must be dead by now" and he said "Yes of course she is otherwise she wouldn't be waiting for you" and I said "am I dead then? I didn't think it would look like this" and he said "yes it is quite ordinary isn't it, but it isn't too bad"

Then I woke up - wondering if I was alive or dead... Strange how your subconscious weaves these things into your dreams.