If dreams came true




I sleep with a sound machine.  It has seven different sounds but I always leave it on 'ocean waves'  I got it shortly after Dan died, to drowned out the noises I didn't want to hear, to make the house not so eerily quite. To create noise where there no longer was any, Dan snored like a chimney and the last couple years had a c pap machine, noises that were now gone. To try and distract my brain long enough to fall asleep. It helped I think. 

We were out of town last week (in Disneyland, but I'll blog about that later) I didn't take the sound machine with us. I figured we would be exhausted enough from the excitement of our day that we would fall asleep immediately. I was right and we easily fell asleep every night. When we got home we had a couple more nights of pure exhaustion, after all Disneyland wears you out. Last night I went to turn the sound machine on and Baby Girl said "O mommy do we have to turn it on, can't we just leave it off?"  Uh ok, we can try that I guess, I can always  turn it on in the middle of the night when I'm lying here awake and shes fast asleep.  We went to bed, the only noise our kittys running rambunctiously around the house.

Baby Girl woke up the next morning and said "mommy I had the bestest dream ever" usually when she tells me this it is about her stuffed animals or her being a princess or some other awesome typical kid dream. So I said "O I can't wait to hear about it tell me"  Then she told me a dream I was not expecting.

"I was playing at the neighbors house and you were walking across the street to come get me. I looked out thier window and daddy was walking beside you coming to get me too.  I ran out the front door and ran to daddy as fast as I could. I ran and ran. Then daddy scooped me up and I gave him kisses and hugs and snuggles. lots and lots and lots and he never put me down."

All I want to say is FUCK! but I can't say that to my Baby Girl.  It was the best dream ever, daddy was alive, and right here in our house, and giving her hugs and kisses. And all I'm thinking is fuck why can't this be real, fuck why does my kid have to just have dreams about her daddy, why can't she have the real thing.

Baby Girl said, "and then I had another dream with daddy. We were going on a trip and you were driving your car and Daddy and I were driving grandpas green truck. (for reference it is a pretty old beat up truck) We were driving down the road and all of a sudden the back of the truck fell off. But it was funny, not scary, and daddy and I sat in the front of the truck and laughed and laughed and laughed"  That is so them, if anyone could make the back half of a truck falling off fun it would be Dan.  He just had a way of making scar things un scary, making calm in the seas of storm, just by being him.

My mother in law posted this thought the other day.  "Last night while we were at the airport waiting for the girls to come home from Disneyland, I saw a young man with long, dark hair in a ponytail. He had lopsided glasses, small earrings and a scruffy goatee-like beard. He wore dark shoes, tan slacks and a black jacket. I wanted to run up to him and hug him but I let it pass. I just stood there and watched him until I couldn't see him any longer. (Sigh)"  

 Uggggggg! and again I say FUCK! why couldn't that have been you? Why couldn't you just be there, just strolling through the airport looking for your mom who had come to pick you up?  Why couldn't you be standing there next to your parents, waiting for Baby Girl and I to come walking up to you? Baby Girl could have ran and got her hugs and kisses and I could have got some too.  Why couldn't you have just come to Disneyland with us? Why can't you just be here?

 On our way home from Disneyland we had a layover in Oakland.  Dan would fly to Oakland a lot for work.  It is not a very exciting airport.  Dan used to say he hated it, that it was the most boring airport in the world. I was sorta glad to be there, I was sorta hoping I would see a glimpse of Dan. Sort of like his mom did. I didn't think I would actually see him but just, I don't know a sign of him. Something that said Dan was here. Dan walked down this same corridor, Dan was alive. I was sort of hoping I might run into one of his co workers, going to or coming from one of those meetings.  They would say hey what are you doing here. I would tell them how we were on our way home from Disneyland. They would tell me how the world I am no longer a part of was going, how the facility named after Dan was going. How much they too missed Dan and how they wish they could ask his advice on what to do with a patient.  They could tell me story about some crazy thing he did at work and I would either say ya I've heard that one or no he never told me about that.  He would be here, even if for just one more second. 

 None of that happened. He didn't walk across our street and scoop Baby Girl up. They didn't go on one last adventure together. My mother in law didn't get to hug him at the airport.  I didn't see any glimpse of him in Oakland. They were all just dreams. Dreams that no matter what won't come true.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

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