Death and Dreams

For the first time in a long time, I dreamt about my father. I remember having "back from the dead" dreams about him a few years ago, with convoluted plots of how he had to fake his death and all that. They were very vivid and I would always have the feeling of waking up into another world when it ended. What? You mean that wasn't real?

So today's dream was a little different, in that there was no explantion for him coming back and he was just there. Most of the details are escaping me now (that's what happens when you try to remember too hard), but there was one moment where he said: "Of course I know I have too many kids," and then proceeded to play with me and my brother (apparently I had been transformed into a little kid). I found that very funny. It was good for me to imagine my father with a sense of humor.

I think the subject of death has been too much on my mind for the past couple of days. A friend of mine from the Philippines passed away last week, and I am still in shock. I really don't kow how to react to it. For starters, he was brutally killed (I've never had anyone taken away from me in that manner before), was under thirty, and his voice in my head is as clear as a summer day. I can even imagine him talking about how unglamorous it is for him to be murdered in that way. And yet, there it is, my friend gone. One less person to call in the Philippines when I get lonely. I will miss him terribly.

I had been helping Louise, who is 85 this year, with her telephone book recently. In her words, more than half of the names in her book are dead, so she needs to update it. She has been reading to me names of those still around and I would type them into the computer and print them out. Last night, I found myself doing the same thing in my PDA, deleting a contact number and e-mail address. I realized that it was the third time I have done so this year, and it felt darn awful.

Time normally heals the hurt that I feel after things like this. But I really don't need time. We just all want our friends back.