Dreaming of you

Last night I had a dream about John. It's not the first time I have dreamt about him but it was the most profound dream I have had, one where you wake up and cant remember was that real, are they alive?
In the dream John had come back for a holiday. It was a universally recognized holiday that everyone celebrates and it felt completely normal ........ in the dream.
In the dream it was the holiday that marks the return of a lost loved one. John was there, healthy (he has never been sick in one of my dreams, always without oxygen, always smiling). We were all eating at a nice restaurant and we were happy to be spending this time with him, to celebrate that John had come back, how Christ like, especially for someone who didn't particularly subscribe to the whole son of God thing. And yet, there he was breaking his bread, laughing with us and telling us stories. We were elated and of course because it was a dream most of the people in the dream were not familiar to me, but I knew John, and I knew my mother.
At the end of our dinner I went to take a nap, knowing full well that this was only a temporary thing, that John would need to go at the end of this day, this holiday. Still sleep was somehow more important to me in the dream.
As I drifted off, John called me to tell me to come. That this was important. That I was supposed to be doing this thing, dealing, facing this hard deep profound sadness and longing. That I could not run away from it. That as many miles as I ran or laps that I swam or books that I read or naps that I took, I could not escape the truth that John was gone, that John died and he will continue to be dead, to die again and again in my dreams and in my days.
I woke up wanting to stay in the dream. I tried to put myself back to sleep, to place myself back in the dream, back there holding John's big bear hands or hugging his broad shoulders.
But I couldn't.
I realized that in that dream John was my father.
He is my father.
He is the man who tells me to do things and steers me in the right direction
and saved me when I was falling off of a cliff
and there he was again
in my dream
holding out his hand to me
pulling me to do the next right thing.

The Family Hero

John died two weeks after my mother had bought a 55 inch flat screen TV for him to watch the Bruins games. John loved TV. The kids love TV obviously as kids will just love TV no matter what but the other adults in this house don't really care for it too much. Now we have two 55 inch flat screen TVs but we don't have John and we don't have the Bruins anymore until next season.

The night John died my mom called me at the Cape house to tell me, distraught and confused, disoriented, her world changed forever. I was two hours away and when she asked me to come to the hospital I told her I would be there soon but not that soon and maybe we should just meet at home. Molly drove from NH, I drove from the Cape and we were all about the emerge on her in our home in Gloucester. Molly called me to tell me that she had just talked to Gramma and she was doing the strangest thing. She was reportedly at home watching the end of the Bruins game.

Of course she was.

And it was an amazing game. We were all sure that Johnny must have helped that last goal in to solidify the Bruins going to the Stanley Cup. We were sure that there was something divine working here and it had everything to do with John.

Tomorrow it will be 3 weeks since we lost John.
It feels like 3 days and it feels like 3 years and it feels like 3 minutes since I kissed the top of his head and I got him last and I walked out the door never to see him again.
Three weeks of crying and planning and laughing and sleeping and walking around outside our house in the dark looking for John.
Three weeks of hoping for the kids and telling the story of John's life and John's death and three weeks of the Bruins.


Last night the Bruins played the 7th game of the Stanley Cup final in Vancouver. Tim Thomas was our new family hero replacing Big Papi and Tommy Brady and Jonathon Papelbon and
Grampa John.

We cheered for the home team from the big flat screen TV, me, my mom, Charlie and Eddie. The kids were at the Cape with Gary but they called throughout the game to cheer with us, to yell with us and to celebrate the home team.

For the first time in those three weeks there was a long period of laughter and forgetting, of staying present with the team, with the moment.
It was not as loud as if John had been there because he was always the loudest yeller but Charlie and my mom came in a close second. We ate pizza and poked fun of each other and we watched at the edge of our seats.

The Bruins won and they won big. Vancouver went nuts and destroyed the town and in Boston we celebrated but after 5 minutes of watching the after party on TV a new feeling set in, the Bruins are over, John's dead.
It was the same type of feeling I would get when I ate a whole sundae or bought a new outfit. It's so exciting and a great fix for about 5 minutes and then reality sets in and whatever it was that you were struggling with to begin with is still there.

I'm not going to go to the rolling rally in Boston. I'll watch it on my big screen TV. I won't be able to find John in Boston but I find him here in the living room, on the couch or in the woods on top of the hill in West Gloucester. He is walking and dancing and he can breathe. He is a little boy skating down at Fernwood Lake with his friends and his brothers and he can breathe.

Sometimes I feel like I am slowing sinking to the bottom of that lake
without a breathe
without a noise.

Unfair

Sometimes when the children were babies I would anxiously watch them in their quiet slumber. I would meditate on the up and down that happens in those hours making sure that each breath was a fruitful effort and all was well in their sleeping baby minds. It never ceases to amaze me how our bodies know what to do. We are born and there we are, out of the womb, crying and breathing, sucking and reaching, clinging to life and to each other. In youth I am witness to the miracle of life and of growth. In old age I am witness to the slowing and breaking down of all that once was.
Three weeks ago, Grampy was at Sadie's basketball game. He was intent on watching the game, checking the score and making sure Sadie knew what position she was playing. We went out to Friendly's and ate food and talked about sports and the weather and politics whatever else to pass the time.
Today he is in the ICU at Beth Isreal hospital and he is clinging to life. He has a tube down his throat to keep himself breathing while they try and get rid of his infection and get his heart rate down and try and just get him stable enough to undergo treatment for colon cancer. I feel like I am in a dream.
Gary and I sat with him for several hours today. We talked a little to him but he became so agitated that we had to stop and finally they gave him sedation. He can't talk to us because of that tube and there is still so much I want him to tell me. How can it be possible that one moment you are with someone not even aware of the moment and then it can be gone, just a fleeting memory?
So we sat. I watched as he breathed in and out. I cheered inside for all those breaths and prayed and meditated for the ones that followed. Could this be the last time I see him?
Because I don't really want it to be.
I really don't.
I also don't want to tell my children their Grandfather died.
My father in law kept telling me that this was not fair and I see his point.
But on the other hand, it is what it is, old age, poor health, expected outcomes.
Then I think about the other Grandfather, the one I spent last night with telling old stories about the West Gloucester neighborhood and "Bunsy" down on the wharf. I listened to him tell me about how his mother died when he was 11 on that very day. I thought that was sad, he thought that was life.
He never tells me it is unfair that he has a life threatening illness, that he can no longer chase the kids.
I think it is unfair.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and about it, I am so mad.
Sometimes when I come in from an overnight shift in the middle of the night I look up at his window and see him standing there looking out in to the darkness, in to the trees that sheltered him as a child. I tell those trees to keep John here for just one more day.
And then I secretly wish that those days spread out before us like a mighty forest, lush and green, growing and thriving, breathing life in to all of us, this family.