A Choice Dreamlike Haunting

I've always liked the old joke about the bus driver/airline pilot.  It goes something like this typically:

I hope I die in my sleep like my dad; not screaming like his passengers.

It's pretty funny, in it's black way.  Which is the way I like it.

I do wish that I die like my dad though.  It wasn't in his sleep, but it was fast.

Sitting on the porch in a comfy chair, looking out over the lake.

Or maybe like my grandfather, well, the one on my mom's side.  He died during his morning constitution.  It couldn't have been too awful a way to go, he was still sitting there when they found him. 

Now, my dad's dad, the other grandfather; he was sick.  For some reason I always thought it was emphysema or something.  But now I'm told it was heart problems.  I was only 4 or 5, so go figure that I got the details wrong.

If I could choose a way to go, it would be in my sleep.  I really, really want to avoid the possibility of having a few moments of clarity.  A few seconds when you know, you just KNOW that you are dying.  That these are the last few thoughts you'll ever have.  And perhaps terror at the thought of the show going on without you, it's star player. 

I assure you, from where your brain is sitting, you are the lead in the play.

I had a dream the other night.  It was about my dad.  I don't know why I can't shake his ghost.  I swear, I've tried living up to all the things that he tried to teach me more in the years since he died, than I ever did while he was living.  I don't really mean to, it's just happening.

In the dream, I somehow went back in time.  To a slightly skewed version of the real past I guess.  I was with my dad when he was young, 18 or so.  I was as I am now.  We went out on the town, him not knowing who I was.  We had a great time.  We talked, played pool, even went to a strip club.  It was quite the oddly inverted father-son night. 

When the night was over, we returned to his house.  Where he went to his room, and promptly passed out on the floor.  I walked around the house.  Recognizing things from his past, little iconic snippets he'd shared with me over time.  His parents were not there, nor were his brother or sister. 

I ended up in his brother's room.  I'd always liked his brother Paul.  I always thought he was so cool.  And in my mind, his teenage room did not disappoint.  There was a guitar, lots of posters, records, a small record player.  For some reason it seemed just right.  I ended up spending the night listening to records, and looking at yearbooks and photo albums.

In the morning, my father awoke.  He stumbled into his brother's room, only to find me there sitting on the floor.  Finally recognizing me as a total stranger to him, he was surprised and asked me who the heck I was.  I paused a moment, then told him exactly who I was.

He sat down to think on the bed.  I went on, as if I couldn't stop.  I told him I was his 40 year old adopted son.  I told him about everything.  I broke every rule in the time traveler's handbook.  It was awful.  His life as I knew it, his marriage, his children, what was going to happen to his brother, even the time, place, and manner of his own death.

It was something else.

I'm not clear on what happened next.  But I started telling him how sorry I was, for how I was going to be in his future.  How I never lived up to what he wanted, how I made so many mistakes, how unhappy I sometimes made him.  I started crying, I couldn't talk anymore I was sobbing so bad.

And that's when I awoke.  I woke myself up with my own crying. 

Not the way I like to wake up.  And I was glad my wife was not in the room to see it.

I have been trying to parse the dream a little since I had it yesterday.  And besides some of the obvious psychology behind much of it, I don't know what to make of it.  I don't normally time travel to spill secrets and apologize to my father, or any other dead people for that matter.

I'm hoping it just means that I want to make better choices in life.  And that for some reason, I've finally had enough things happen for me to have motivation to do so.  I can't explain it, or isolate any one incident.  All I know is that I'm trying to do better.  Life is short, and I've piddled over half of mine away it seems.  Better choices are in order.

I'm sticking to my choice of dying in my sleep someday though.  I think it's a good one.

My father made a choice I think too.  Regarding his own death.  He might not have been able to choose the time or place.  But I have a sneaking suspicion he had an inkling of the manner.

About four or five years before he died, he had some pretty big doctor's appointments.  Why he went, I'll never know, my mom doesn't even know.  Whatever he found out, he took with him. 

Maybe what he did next was the influence of seeing his own father lingering with sickness in his late life.

All I know, is that from that point on, he did several things.  He started smoking again, as much as he wanted.  He took early retirement.  He built a fine retirement house for him and my mom.  He made sure that she was taken care of.  He gave away some pretty significant things to his children.  Then he died.

Three cheers for having choices in life.