I'll write this to you, father, in the first person. First person narrative is your preferred narrative This was my midnight dream between the days of Sunday, March 31st and Monday, April 1st, 2019. You have been dead just three years and 14 days.
Your honorary NCAA basketball pool bracket, in which I enter in your honor every year, was busted last night when the Duke Blue Devils lost to the Michigan State Spartans 68-67. Your bracket name was Ogre1. Just as it was in real life.
The dream was bizarre, as most dreams tend to be but you walked hard in this dream and I still wondered, as I woke, which places in my subconscious you walked so hard to convey your message to me.
We waited for you. The three faceless and I. And there was a child. Perhaps an eight year-old boy with us. He was waiting too. Faceless. I imagine he was me but there's no real telling in a dream as there is no real telling of any dream. Just scattered attempts at placing all the players and places and things in some justifiable juxtaposition…
We waited. We waited for you to arrive after your board meeting. The four of us. And the boy. Five together. The other three adults were too familiar. We waited in your 1972 Buick Estate Wagon. The four of us across the bench seat in the front. The boy laid in the back back.
I knew he was there as he periodically popped his head up in anticipation for your arrival. He began to look a bit like you. A bit like me.
You appeared as a hurried specter across the lawn of my childhood home. A lawn I had mowed a thousand thousand times. It was raining slightly and I could see the lawn as it grew in the night air. Your obsession with fertilizer and having me mow it egregiously throughout the seasons had awarded you your goal of having the best lawn in the neighborhood. I will forever mow your lawn in all dreams.
A cigarette lingered in your right hand, you held a smart, tight satchel of work papers in your left. You got in the back seat and laid down. Face up at first, until you finished your smoke. After you had extinguished it in the clean, shiny metal ashtray in the armrest attached to the door, you turned away from us in the front seat and laid on your side. The boy peaked over the seat at you. You winked at him before closing your eyes.
I could not tell if you were awake as we pulled out of our driveway. The driveway where you had single-handedly beaten the neighborhood kids in basketball games. Beaten us a thousand thousand times…
We drove off in the dark and slight rain. I had no idea where we were headed. And it didn't much matter as the three other faces became clearer. Each face dreamily and slowly morphed into characters of my psyche. Obama was driving. Next to him was Hillary. Squeezing me against the shotgun door was Trump. Supertramp's “Goodbye Stranger” played purposefully on the AM radio.
The two were smiling. And laughing about something. Mr. Personality next to me was complaining about how someone had said something about him and much ado about something being somebody else's fault. My disdain for him only grew when I checked over my shoulder to see if you were okay and I caught the stench of his lies right in my face. It tainted my nostrils and contaminated my mouth as I turned. His breadth, his revolting self, was bleeding into my space. I detested him for intruding in my dream… my dream about you.
He was there, however, to build balance. A reckless balance. An ugly, reckless balance between us. Your wife and I often contemplate whether you'd lock horns with this particular buffoon if you were still among the living. Or would you continue your downward spiral of consuming your daily allotment of FOX News propaganda channel horseshit and play today's version of Archie Bunker??
Lois and I tend to think you would see right through this malevolent con man and wave the old Republican flag for Kasich, McCain, and those who fought the good fight. But here he was. In our car, with us, smooshing me against the door. Belching foulness. And going with us wherever we were headed. Headed with unnecessary balance.
We arrived at a retreat.
A recreational retreat somewhere in what could easily have been deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains. An early evening summer day.
A warm, almost purple twilight glow laid over the entire forest like a visible snow globe, encasing us as we each headed to our cabins.
The three politicians faded but the boy remained.
We wanted to follow you to your cabin. Follow you to make sure you got there safely. You had aged suddenly, during the ride. You walked tenderly, with purpose, favoring your lower back and your knees. I called after you. You didn't look back.
The retreat had scheduled activities. Most were hokie and I knew you'd pass on the therapy and “treatments”. But they offered a jacuzzi crawl and that fit the bill. I knew you'd enjoy that one.
I hovered now, like the specter you once were. I could see the compound from above. I watched as the boy went to retrieve you from your cabin and accompany you on the jacuzzi crawl. You had gone ahead. I was now a prisoner in the mind's eye of the boy as we, as I, raced through the encampment. Looking for you, searching for you.
A trail of mild destruction led me after you. A lawn chair knocked over, a picnic umbrella on the ground, low branches splintered…
It was if we were tracking an obnoxious and ornery silverback toward his next jacuzzi!
Then I found you. The boy found you. You were floating ever-gracefully in the jacuzzi on the aft deck of the Crown Princess. We were sailing to Hawai'i and had at least another day out before arriving on O'ahu.
This, the dream, and this realm, was the last earthly jacuzzi you enjoyed. How we found you, Ogre1, here in this dream, is a mystery.
April 1, 2019