Sins of the Father, Suffering of the Son
Note: This post discusses deeply personal matters, graphic description of death, alcohol abuse. Some readers may find this disturbing.
January 24th, 2008
I am sitting at my small desk, as always, on my barely-passable laptop playing Counter Strike 1.6 on a public server. It is cold outside, overcast, but calm.
My room is nice and warm, I have snacks and drinks. Everything should be cozy.
But it isn't.
Something is in the air. Something bad.
Today it has been a full week since anyone has been able to contact my father.
We had been living separately for the past year, my mother instructing him to pack up after another drunken rampage at that time.
He moved just a few streets down from us, about a 10 minute walk away, on another small property we had inherited years past.
"I am going to go and check up on your father."
It is my mom, peering through the door. Her face is visibly worried.
"Okay mom!"
30 minutes later, the phone rings. It is her.
Through cries of anguish she gets the words out. "I found your father, he is dead."
It is just under 3 months to my 13th birthday, and I had just lost my father figure.
As you might have gathered, he died due to his alcohol abuse. Short on money, he drank some homemade brew his friend gave him. It ruptured his larynx and he vomited blood until he died.
And what do I feel?
After everything was said and done. His body laid to rest. The condolences gathered.
Anger. Absolute and utter anger.
How dare he? After everything else he put the family through, this is his final party trick? How dare he leave me?
And it seems my dear friend, it is both in life and death that anger is an emotion too strong to bear.
It all started with an encounter that would repeat itself like clockwork for years to come.
Just about a year had passed since he died.
I had gone to sleep, dreaming away, when suddenly.
I wake up.
This my dear friend is not "waking up" as one normally does. No sleepy-head slowly emerging from the dream realm, doing a little stretch, with your body still comfortable and warm.
This I imagine is the way our ancestors woke up when they still slept under open skies. A leftover from our caveman days to alert us, even in sleep, and put us into full alert mode in an instant.
I am very much awake, like the flip of a switch, I am as lucid as you could be, aware of my surroundings.
On the edge of my bed, our little Chihuahua doggie, named Bubi (short for Blizzard...figure it out).
This already is strange. While we love him both, he is decidedly my mom's pet. He sleeps with her, adores her, is attached to her. He is never with me at this hour.
He is in full alert mode, growling and barking, defending me from something at the other side of my room, right in the corner.
I can feel it too.
I dare not turn around. I dare not turn my head.
I manage to find my phone and click it on. The time is 23:32, January 20th.
(Please note the time is an approximation indeed, it has been 15 years.)
Then it all clicks.
My father is here. This is when he passed away.
This goes on for some time. Minutes? Hours? I can make no sense of time, even years later.
I lay there frozen in fear, the only comfort being Bubi, still vigorously defending me.
Eventually, his barking stops. He makes his way over to me, licks my face, and cuddles up.
Seems I have a guardian for tonight. I can sleep again.
The above encounter repeats itself year after year. With each passing year, my fear lessens. In fact it changes to annoyance. "Oh come on, just piss off old man." I think to myself, being woken up again, as I switch sides and return to sleep.
So my father took a more direct approach.
Fun fact!
Did you know spirits can invade your dreams and take control of them?
Well I found out the hard way. Several times, over the years.
Let me set the scene.
I find myself in the living room, watching television with my mother.
I am dreaming, I know that.
But things feel off.
The furniture isn't right. The TV is old. The floor is different.
This is how our house was before, when we moved in.
Suddenly, a noise at the front door. It is a noise I recognize, the noise of the outside door (previously, the house had a double entrance, with the first door leading to a small glass enclosure) opening, and heavy footsteps on the vinyl flooring.
"It is your father, he is coming home." my mom says in the dream.
"That is impossible, he is dead." is my reply.
"No, no, that is not true, no."
I stand up. That is when I notice, I am a lot shorter. In fact, I am seem to be the height I was several years ago.
I rush to the front door, open it and enter the glass enclosure.
And there he is, my father.
"Dad, you are not supposed to be here, you are dead."
"I am coming home."
"No dad, no. You passed away, you do not belong here, you have to move on."
"I am coming home."
"No! You are dead! Dead! You died! Go away!"
snap I am awake again. Just like that.
My feelings at this time? I wasn't scared.
But I was starting to understand something: My father's spirit has a problem. It is still here.
Another one.
This dream is amazing.
I appear to be in a Final Fantasy style setting. Sci-Fi and Fantasy!
There is a great battle. Green hills are in the distance, with a big city peering out behind them.
I have a sword, and a gun. Several other participants give me directions, we are charging into an attack.
Suddenly, everything stops. I can't move.
From the right side of my vision, my father appears, casually walks in, looking completely out of place in this setting.
"Hello, my sonny."
"Dad? What are you doing here?"
"I-"
"NO! You don't belong here! Go away! YOU. ARE. DEAD!"
snap Darn. That was a good dream until then.
These encounters repeated themselves, and started escalating.
The last one I remember, I did not get a word in.
Again my dream was hijacked, and this time, my father was doing the yelling.
He expressed to me how disappointed he is in me, that I am a failure in his eyes.
Something has to give. Something has to be done.
My mother has a new friend.
She took a loan previously, and now a lady around her age comes to the house once a month to collect they payment.
(Apparently this was normal for a time? Such a concept is foreign to my Millennial brain)
They end up talking a lot, as such each collection takes about 2 hours, rather than 2 minutes.
Over time she confides in my mother, a bit scared of her reaction, that she is a strong medium.
Not only can she see spirits, she can talk to them.
And my father is there. And he is angry at himself. His spirit is unable to pass on, stuck between worlds. Unable to find peace.
It is because of us. He has been in this state for 5 years.
He cannot pass on because we (his children and wife) hold resentment towards him.
We have plenty of reason to do so. Ignoring what he did in his life, even after he passed away he caused destruction to us.
For he took a big loan, shortly before he died, and the banks came to collect, causing financial ruin to the living.
Anger. Resentment. Hate.
I am unable to let go of it.
But then it all happens one evening.
I am now 20 years old, and starting to understand the world is not so simple as I thought.
Having a job is difficult. Relationships are difficult. People are difficult. Life itself is, indeed, difficult.
And I just let go. I cry, alone, at my desk. I do not agree with the path my father took in life, the decisions he made, but I understand now why he perhaps ended up being the way he was.
The anger is gone.
And just like that, it stops.
The yearly apparitions no longer happen.
My dreams are left alone.
His presence is no longer felt.
It indeed seems, he has passed on.
That was almost 10 years ago.
Speaking to my mother, she said sometimes she still sees him in her dreams.
The dreams she says are pleasant. They are together, cuddling, talking, enjoying each others company.
It would then seem my friends, that the strongest emotion in life and death is not anger.
It is love.
