Three years ago today, around 2pm, I watched the color from my dad’s face dissappear.  it was a Monday.  I held his left hand in my left hand.  I almost got sick at how he changed colors so fast and drastically.  J’aime, Serah, and Robbie were in the room too, but I’m not sure which ones were watching too.  A week before, almost to the hour, he found out he had a brain tumor.  He went into surgery that Friday, and never woke up afterward.

I’m going to recount the first night I went to see my dad, but only what I directly experience, and only what happened that night. 

.J’aime had called me from the hospital that Tuesday before and said that daddy wanted to talk to me.  I talked to him briefly and said that i’d come down to see him.  I didn’t right away.  It wasn’t until a day later when J’aime called me and said she needed me to come down right away that i actually went down.  I ran down to Mercy hospital since it was only a mile or so from my apartment.  Turns out, Robbie was trying to marry my dad, and that was a lot of emotion, at a very emotional time.

I got tried to get some alone time with my dad to talk about whether or not he wanted this.  The tumor had been causing him to forgot things and say things that didn’t make sense, and he just seemed out of it.  I said, "So, i hear something about you and robbie getting married, do you want that to happen?"  He immediately went from a dopey happy face to an embarrassed child’s face that knows he did something wrong.  He slumped down a little and looked away and said, "Oh.  I don’t know."  I only had a minute or so before some guy that knew daddy came in and sat down to interrupt us.  then Sarah Slavic came in too.  I didn’t get what time I wanted, but it was enough for me to know that it was out of the question to let talks of marriage continue.

Robbie had gathered all her relatives in the chapel downstairs.  They came with a ring and they were expecting a cermony.  I hadn’t talked to her family for quite a few years, but I always loved and missed them.  Robbie’s brother-in-law, Scott, was one of them that I felt I could really connect with because he just had a very easy going personality and was religious.  J’aime and I asked Scott if we could talk to him about what’s going to happen.  The 3 of us went into a room and talked very calmly about it.  J’aime and I said that there was no reason to rush this decision, they’ve had 7 years to get married and they never were able to comit to eachother then.  We said that he is not in any state of mind to make such a life changing decision, that not only affects him but everyone, ESPECIALLY if he died.  Scott said that we shouldn’t deny Robbie the chance to marry someone that she loved.  We failed to see eye to eye on the topic, which was shocking to J’aime and I because of how obvious the right choice seemed.

Robbie called for a Catholic priest she had been familiar with to marry them.  The priest wanted to meet with my dad before hand, as he always did, to make sure the two people want to unite.  As he did that, we called my dad’s best friend, Bruce, and let him know to come down.  I called my step-grand father, an attorney, and asked him what we’re allowed to do legally to stop this, or if we can’t what are we looking at in terms of the estate, life insurance, and anything else if my father dies and they are married.  It wasn’t pretty.  (but honestly, neither is what ended up happening anyway)

The priest came out and said that my father seemed very lucid but that my dad simply seemed like he didnt know if he wanted to marry Robbie, and on that ground, he wouldn’t marrry them.  Honestly, we all chuckled a bit at the relieve because the priest called my dad lucid.  As Robbie went to tell her family there would be no wedding, Serah and I went in with my dad.  This is where "Mr. Lucid" pointed to his IV and asked me if I knew what was in it.  I think i said something along the lines of, "the good stuff, I’m sure."  He said, and I’ll try to quote this as best as I can, "The mon valley express way.  they point it in there and it flows from here (points to bag) to here (points to forearm).  heh, i’m tearfully laughing here…wow dad, you really loved that express way.

A few minutes later, we were watching something on the TV and it hinted the mentioning of this dutch colony in the middle of the state somewhere.  For the life of me I can’t remember the name of it now.  But as he talked about it, I remembered going there as a kid in kindergarten.  I remember seeing their bread ovens.  I remember riding on the bus there.  I remember putting the wood bar that held pales of cow milk on either end on my shoulders.  A rush of these childhood memories came to me, that I don’t think i ever thought about until that moment.  It was quite overwhelming and refreshing, that these memories were coming to me, but not only that, but that my dad was reconnecting me to them.  how Ironic, the man that forced me to block out so much of my childhood was helping me remember some. 

When it came time to leave, everyone hugged daddy and told him that they loved him.  I wasn’t ready for that, because I expected him to come through that surgery fine, and I didn’t want him to think this was an open door to my life once he got better.  I waiting until last and just smiled at him and said, "hey, take care of yourself, I’ll see you this weekend when you get out." 

wow.  I think i see a trend going on here.  i woke up at almost 4:15am from this dream.  I had gone to bed about 4 am last night and slept until 5:30, and went to bed around 1am.  I’ll have to start recording the times and such of these dreams.  I’m going to leave out a few details to keep the authenticity of the dream; ie there were a few people in the dream that shouldn’t have been, but they weren’t family and they were distracting from the plot.  for reference sake though, I punched andrew bonnell in the face for giving me his AOL screenname so that I could contact him when i woke up.  but wow, i just realized something…I’ll come back to this after i tell the dream…

So deirdre and I are driving around in a truck of sorts, and we drive by a store called SEKI and they only sell pepsi products.  not important at all, but I’m leaving it in there because it’s weird.  anyway, we were talking, she gets out, next thing i know is i’m in the estate driveway facing the road in a tractor pulling a cart, I loop to the right in the yard and come back around to drive behind the house and i look to the right where there is a lone pine tree and Dante is tied to it barking.  I park the tractor and run over to pet him and play around with him.  Someone else comes over, a young guy, I recognize him, but now that i woke up i can’t remember who he is.  But seeing him and dante confirmed to me that this was a dream, and I am visiting the dead.  I said, "so this is really afterlife i’m visiting, isn’t it?" and he just looked like he wasn’t allowed to confirm that to me.  Then I let Dante off the chain and walk inside the house with him up to the top left bedroom where there is a large bed in it’s normal spot and serah and J’aime are there.  This is where we’re talking with some guy and we get on the conversation of being able to talk to everyone there when I wake up.  He says that he has AOL IM and that if I sent him a message, he’d respond.  And so I’m l said, "well, i need to know your screenname"  and i was feeling stressed to get this information before I woke up.  And he said something like "oh well, you just message me and you’ll be good" and when he said that, I knew he was lying to me about having messenger at all.  this is where he is now andrew bonnell and i punch him in the face and yell at him for not being legit with me on an important topic and wasting my time.  j’aime and serah cool things down and we talk a little more about how this place is the afterlife.  We know that my dad is outside working on something.

Then I realize with nervous excitement, "Guys, this means that Barney (my grandfather) is probably out in the barn…do you want to go see him??"  J’aime seemed more excited than serah, but we decide we’ll go.  So we are walking downstairs talking about what he’ll be like and I start to get blurry vision, like i’m about to wake up, but i consciously force myself back to sleep.  When we turn the corner into the dining room, dante had followed us, and I note to serah how great it is to see dante.  I can actuall feel him.  I said how firm he feels and how short his hair is, just as I remember him.  I don’t know how to express how real this dream is besides that.  we are going to walk out the addition door, and when we get in the addition, it’s been worked on.  There’s a lot of work to be done, but all the walls are finished and there’s a stairway down to the basement.  I can see through it that there’s a light on downstairs, and I get the feeling that someone is down there…but I don’t find out…I fear that it was (grandmother’s mother? aunt? i forget), who hung herself in the basement.  Anyway, it’s obvious that my dad had been working on the place.  We go out on the deck and can see my dad over in the park working.  I ask Serah and J’aime if they want to spend anytime with him.  J’aime just looks at Serah as if it’s up to her and Serah says that she’d rather not.  So we walk down and I yell for my dad, thinking that he should introduce us, but Serah shows resistance, so I yell back nevermind.  It’s funny how common place it seems that we’re there.  Anyway, I step into the barn, and I am definitely a little scared as to what I’ll find, the lights are all on, the pocket door to the main area is shut and i loudly say, "Hello?"  Then I hear some feet on the gravel outside, and I turn and catch a glimpse of him before he turns quickly away out of shock and says, "Oh my goodness, Josh?!" as if he’s embarrassed.  He turns back around, big smile on his face, and kind of chuckles out of disbelief that we’re there.  He looks a lot like the pictures of him being old, grey hair and kinda fat.  He’s sweating and dirty like he’s been working, has a white baseball hat on that he takes off to meet us and he’s wearing some reddish over alls.  So we just start talking about how he looks alot like i thought he would, and how i always thought he looked so much different in pictures of him old vs him young.  My dad comes over as we talk by the stone wall infront of the barn.  Then, my dad’s friend Bruce shows up there too, and we’re talking as if he knows about visiting here all the time too.  Then i mention to Barney about how it seems that all hall men die around their 50s, and that uncle kenny and I were trying to remember how everyone had died.  He told me as far back as his grandfather that all died around then.  I don’t remember the reasons why.  I then asked him if there were any women, and he said there was one, and he goes to get like a genealogy book, but I never get to see it before I wake up.

So, the thing i just realized…I had just emailed serah today asking if she had any memories of caleb being normal, because I do not.  I wonder if i’m unable to dream about caleb being normal because I don’t have those visions in my head, so i replace him with other people that are around his age, like the guy outside with dante and andrew bonnell.  Then i remember from the movie "What dreams may come" that cuba gooding Jr was a doctor in robin william’s life, but he’s really his son.  And I’ll admit, that I have thought of andrew bonnell as a relationship i’d have with caleb.  Not that andrew and I even talk, but just that he’s around the same age and we get along pretty well.  With that, it’s an easier fit that Caleb is in these dreams too, and I did have the sense that he was always there, but as i reflect back, i can’t remember him being there.

I have such an urge to email serah and J’aime and see what they dreamed about last night, but I’m a little more rational than to think they had the same dream.  Wouldn’t that be messed up?