Father

After my father died, I started to have dreams about him or just with him in them. The first dream I had was blood and horrific. My father was in a bathtub and creatures of some sort were draining his body of blood into the bathtub. The dream was especially challenging because my father did not died a bloody death. He had a massive heart attack while he was cutting down some pussy willow branches. I had just turned 23.


When my father was a teenager, my grandfather was a railroad engineer. It was the depression. While my grandfather was lucky to be employed, he wasn’t so good about making sure his pay made it back to his family. Often my grandfather’s pay was poured into liquor or other amusements in the towns he found himself in. My father took on what Adult Children of Alcoholics theories call the ‘hero’ role. Besides hunting, fishing, and selling their own blueberries back to the Shakers at the Shaker Village near his home, he took on any odd jobs a young teen could find to help his mother take care of his two younger brothers. One day he heard about a train wreck in town. A boxcar with can goods had turned over into the river. My father got his gunnysack and headed for the river. He dived in and began loading his sack with cans until he couldn’t carry any more. He took those cans home and started over. He kept going until he was runoff by the authorities. Years later, my uncle told me that there were many times in that next year when difference between eating and going hungry was to open some of the mystery cans. In those days, labels on cans were glued on. Being submerged in the river had loosened the labels, and all of the cans my father brought home had lost their labels along the way.


Later dreams of my father were never bloody. He mostly appears in my dreams as he did in my life – a larger than life figure that makes me feel safe and loved. Often when I am on a cusp of a new adventure, I will have a dream of my father. Usually these dreams involve reliving some beautiful memory of my childhood – going to the woods on an adventure, swimming in the ocean together, or being side by side at the workbench in the basement. When I was five, we cut down some maple trees in the backyard to make room for the pool. My father took the trunk of one of the maples and made a stool for me to stand on next to him at the workbench, so I could reach the top. That was just the first time I remember him finding a way to lift me up. But, I know I am always standing on his shoulders. And, when he comes to me in a dream, I feel lifted up again.