We lost my Dad to cancer. We had just the year with him and that was too short but I'm glad we came. It took me three years to recover enough to do some grief therapy with hospice and it has been six years and a bit that his place has been empty in my life.
We moved to a suburb of Denver.
I woke up this morning after dreaming about a call with my Dad. We had told each other how we missed each other and loved each other. Then the call was cut off. I woke up reaching to call him back and the I realized he was not at the other end of my phone and the pain was very sharp. It's been at least a year since this has happened. It was so very sweet and then so very painful.
I couldn't go back to sleep- didn't want to- and started to read. I read an article discussing how people are reading books to deal with corona virus anxiety, and it mentioned Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter. I'd never read it, but the description was intriguing. It's the semi-autobiographical story of Katherine Anne Porter's survival of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. I won't give any more of the story away, but it struck home. The story noted that this is the only written account of a survivor and that led me to a journal link which discussed trauma memory and recovery of great tragic events. There were no books written about the great flu pandemic, which killed at least 39 million people, until the 1980s. The pain and loss and trauma were subsumed in winning The Great War and the world tried to forget.
All around fascinating and hit me as we consider how to handle covid-19 and what I believe will be another great pandemic.
E said that the dream was because I so was used to calling my Dad whenever I was worried or concerned and needed to talk to someone and of course he is right.
I posted on FB but then thought- maybe I need to start thinking a little more longform. We are trying to decide how to handle the next few weeks.
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