What would have been my father’s 77th birthday in 2002 was
hard. It came 18 months after he’d died. I’d already been through one of his
birthdays without him, so it was strange to me that this one was more difficult
than the first.
But then, I’d been in a crummy mood anyway. I had a raging
case of PMS. My then-only son was not feeling well. My beloved spaniel, Raven,
was sick, too, with what we thought was pneumonia, but turned out to be
advanced-stage lung cancer. It was all-around a very bad day.
After the veterinarian called and gave us the news about
Raven, we went to pick her up from the vet’s office. We then went to Oakland
Cemetery, where my father is buried, to take him his gladiolus and chocolate
bar. Raven went along, too. As we approached Dad’s grave, she immediately
sniffed hard right over his name on the headstone. It was weird, but I also
thought, well, at least somebody’s up there who’ll take care of her.
That evening, at bedtime, I lay on the floor with Raven and
watched and listened to her struggle to breathe. She was down to 23 pounds,
from her usual robust 35 pounds. Her chest rose and fell fast and shallow, and
I thought about how similar Dad looked in those last days when he’d sleep.
I crawled into bed but barely slept. I woke up every hour to
check on Raven. I’d think about Dad. I’d turn over onto the opposite hip. I got
up at 2 a.m. and took half a Benadryl. I finally fell into a dream sleep, and
that’s when it happened.
Dad visited me.
It was the first time I'd dreamt about him. I was in a post
office. There was a long counter in the front, and tables at the back of the
waiting area. I was at the back area, filling out some kind of paperwork. My
back was turned away from the front counter.
Then I heard it – whistling, pitch-perfect whistling. I
heard a man cracking corny jokes with a clerk at the counter. The man was
quoting a limerick I knew I’d heard a thousand times before. I immediately
stopped filling out papers. I stood there, frozen.
No, I thought. He can’t be here. He’s dead.
I slowly turned, and looked toward the counter.
There was my father, leaning on his left elbow, turned
halfway toward the clerk, halfway toward me. He wore a blue-and-brown-striped Oxford
shirt with countless pens and mechanical pencils stuck in the front pocket, and dark blue “Mr. Goodwrench” pants, both of which I’d bought him for
his birthday one year. My father was pink and plump, like he was before his
open-heart surgery in 1995 for quadruple bypass and an aortic valve replacement.
Dad looked at me, smiled and chuckled. He scared the
buhjeezus out of me. I gasped and cried out. I thought, my God, I’m seeing a
ghost! Joaquin woke me up. He said I was crying.
I thought about my dream all day long, and wondered why my
father just stood there, looking at me and laughing. And then it came to me – that
man loved sneaking up behind us and scaring us out of our skin. No doubt, he
was laughing because he knew he’d just pulled off the mother of all pranks from
beyond the grave. That is so George.
It was no ordinary dream. And, as in life, my father is no
ordinary spirit.
