I waited for him to visit me in my dreams. I wasn't in a hurry. I've heard friends speak of lost loved ones returning, of a blink of a vision, an intense dream of a visit, a breeze and an essence of deep love, and I waited for my father to return. I believed the more I stayed away from pictures of him and the music he loved - hard facts of his existence, facts that brought on the whacking grief of his disappearance, his goneness - his spirit would return and whisper to me. I knew I'd see him again.
My lens of the world is tainted since his death. I see everything now and think, 'ah he'd love that,' a coffee on the west pier on a sunday morning, 'he'd love that,' a great rugby match like today, 'jesus, he'da loved that', and the breaking light at dawn over the east mountain, well this... this is his legacy, he gave it to us and when I see it now, I can only think, 'he'd love to see that'.
My thoughts are pulled to his thoughts. I realize nothing has changed only intensified, his thoughts always mattered to me.
He arrived quite unexpectedly. Like all dreams, visions, visits, he appeared in the strangest place, opening an unfamiliar door, his shirt a baby blue under his V-neck cashmere sweater, white hair the same as the day he left us, his hand out, moving gently, motioning me forward through the door.
That was it, no more, nothing left to toil over. I concluded my father was and always will be showing me the way. And it was the simple gesture of his hand that said, go on!
