dream

last night i had a dream about my dad. that doesn't happen very often, i think i can only remember having dreamt about him a few times before. but last night he came to move in with us, which was a little odd. he was friends with one of my co-workers and they would hang out. my co-worker would refer to him as an old man, because he was 67, and then i said to my co-worker that he was pretty much an old man himself. he had all his mail forwarded to our house. i went to get the mail and there was a "make your own pair of shoes" kit for me, but then a huge stack of business reply cards for my dad. i went through them and noticed that he was doing a lot of business with my current work. how did i not know that? did he know i worked there too?

it was late december 1997 when i was back in Ohio visiting my mom for xmas, when i had gone to Eat N' Park with Cary for coffee. we were supposed to go to lisa's after and when we got to her house, lisa came out crying. it is such a weird thing to see your friends crying, you don't want it to happen and i instantly wanted to console her. i didn't understand what was going on but she told me i had to call home right away. my brother was at the house and he told me what had happened and that i needed to come home. dad had been out running while on vacation in mexico and he had been hit by a truck. of course my initial reaction was - but he's ok, right? he was not ok.
i can't remember if i cried then. it was a really weird, sureal feeling. i probably cried but it was also almost too big to comprehend, and what if i misunderstood what my brother had told me. i got home and what i had heard was confirmed to be true. he was not ok. he wasn't coming back. he was only 53. then i cried a lot.
my initial selfish thought was - who is going to walk me down the isle when i get married? i also remembered that i hadn't spoken to him since november, and that when i got off the phone after that call, i had remembered thinking how it was probably the best phone conversation i had ever had with him. he had moved to mexico for work not even a year before. i remember him calling me at school and even though my parents had been divorced for 10 years already, when he said he was moving to mexico, it was really the first time i ever felt like he was leaving. i didn't really want him to go, even though i saw him maybe once or twice a year, but i also thought it was a pretty great opportunity and i was hoping to get the chance to visit someday. we weren't going to get together over xmas because we were planning a family trip to all meet up in las vegas in february. he was going to run the marathon which was in february back then and us kids were going to head out there to see him and to hang out. we hadn't ever had a vacation like that before, so we were all looking forward to it. i was also excited to show him my bleach blonde hair, my newly pierced nose and tell him more about my exciting (cough cough) job at a successful internet start up. i was a success!! and i wanted to tell him all about it.
but on december 21 1997, that opportunity was taken away.
those first few years were weird. i had a lot of growing up to do so this only added to the turmoil i was already experiencing. the blonde hair grew out, the exciting job at the start up turned into a trip to thailand, to london, to morocco and then 2 months in costa rica. after the trip to costa rica i was a different person. i swear that that trip saved my life.
i started mountain biking, i was taking better care of myself, i adopted a 3rd cat and i met eric.
i think about my dad quite a bit. when i have tough times at work, and really don't know what to do, i really wish he was here to talk to. once i asked him what he did for work and after like 45 minutes of explaining, i really couldn't tell you what it was. but now so often i would really like to bounce some ideas of off him and get his advice.
i think about him when i run. he was a great runner. he had run on and off for as long as i can remember, i even remember all piling in the car with my mom to go track him down when he was caught in a torrential down pour and asking him why he walked to the end of the driveway before starting to run. but when he was like 45 he started running more regularly. he ran, and he ran, he ran some more. i didn't understand his accomplishments, and i fear that none of us in the family did. he had a personal best of just under 3hrs for a marathon, he placed top 5 in his age group in many races, one year he ran 11 marathons in 12 months. again, i would love to be able to talk him about running, to find out how he could run so fast and what drove him to run the many miles he did. its also so sad that he never got to have a garmin!! he would have loved a garmin!!!
i also think about him when i look at my kids. he never got to meet my kids. i can't even imagine what he would have been like with them. i don't think i had ever seen him even interact with kids. i think he would have liked them. i get the weepiest about that, even 14 years later.