Dream A Little Dream Of Me

 

I found this picture of my dad in a photo album I hurriedly packed this weekend.  I made it the home screen of my smart phone. I miss him so much.

Honestly, I've been struggling this last week.  Struggling with all the emotion that goes with the events of the last post my sister wrote so well.  She found words when all I could find were moving boxes, tears and frustration.

 The last week of packing was overwhelming. Five years worth of caregiving, fighting red tape, and making enormous decisions has come to an end. The doing of it all ended. Mom's tucked into a dementia care facility and my day to day care of her is in other, very capable, hands. Caring for her kept some of the emotion in check. Tasks kept the larger waves of emotion at bay. Now the tasks are gone.

All this emotion was not just about my mom being sick and selling the house.  I was saying goodbye to my dad again.  He was still such a presence in that house, mom made sure of it.  After he died, she made a quilt of his t-shirts, then one of his sweat shirts. She kept all of his pictures up. He was her knight, she his princess for 44 years of marriage.  As the dementia progressed, she started hallucinating him. After the initial surprise, it became comforting for her to see him.  Better to see your true love than a bear running to attack you.

 As her memory melts we talk about him a lot: the day they were married and their enormously snowy honeymoon complete with snow angels, pink champagne, and the honeymoon suite dad reserved in Canada. She was nineteen, he was twenty nine. It's a story she repeats more than frequently because of her illness and I never ever mind hearing it one more time.

When dad died, myself and my siblings left my dad's things at the house in a kind of an unsaid understanding that they were my mom's things.  We each took something small back to our own homes, but his things belonged to her now. And, it felt comforting that he was still at their house, like he wasn't completely gone from family gatherings or a visit to say hi to mom and go out. He was still there.

Now...his things are packed and distributed between family members.  He's not in the house. It's very much a goodbye.  One that I didn't see coming.  I miss drawing and writing with him, just he and I at the kitchen table, even after I'd grown up and moved out.

Love stays. Even when things come and go. Love stays.
Back to you Dreamer.