A story about love.

I don’t normally post about my dreams. But, if you can tell, I’ve been in a bit of a weird funk lately. One that had me crying a lot more at random times, in random bars, at random episodes of Friends. One that had me thinking too much. One that shook me to my core.

And it started with a dream that I had, sometime, while I was in Vang Vieng. So, I think, to understand how I’ve been feeling lately, you have to understand this dream.

I was in a house I didn’t recognize for some sort of get together. My mom was there and so was her boyfriend. And some strangers about my age. Who I was thinking were his children. Not that I even know if he has children.

And my dad was there.

And this didn’t seem weird.

At some point I was talking to my mom in this dream and she, as usual, was really getting on my nerves. And I thought, “how am I going to manage to move back in with her when I come home.”

With her.

It was at this moment in the dream where I kind of stepped back from it and started racking my brain to think of why my parents weren’t living together. I knew they weren’t divorced so I couldn’t really figure it all out.

And then it hit me that my dad had died.

And I turned to him, crying, and ran up to him and hugged him and told him I loved him. And he told me that he loves me.

And then I woke up.

My family has never been the affectionate type. We’re close, but not ones to hug or tell each other we love them or call just to say hi. It just doesn’t happen.

My dad never said it to me. Not in my entire life that I can recall.

On the night before his surgery, when they cut out his tongue and his voicebox, I went home to visit him. I knew that it was his last chance to ever say it. And even then, there was nothing.

I didn’t say it either. It just wasn’t something we did. But I was kind of mad and sad at that moment, knowing that I would never in my life hear my dad tell me he loved me.

And so to hear him say it, for the first time ever, if only in a dream, kind of threw me. And made me cry. And sent me into a weird funk of not knowing what to believe.