It happened again. I dreamed of my father's funeral, yet, once again. But, it was different in one and all aspects. I was crying, and it seemed I was the stranger there, and even so hordes of people who have still not condoled with me were lined up in a neat row, all paying their respects to a man they only knew through me, I felt alone, as though on a dark moonless night on a road to nowhere. It was a grand occasion. Almost like a festivity, elaborately decorated and set-up venue - much like a wedding. Video cameras, photographers, loads of sumptuous food, vibrant and jewelled clothed women, canopied seating area. And - amidst all this a hazy darkness making it hard for me to see, hard for me to understand, hard for me to find my way through people, perhaps hard for me to even think.
This long father's day I spent mulling over this dream. The Freud tends to come out in all of us the minute there is a dream we can vividly recall, and a dream we are moved by. We begin to get a glimpse into the dark abyss, that hidden area of our conciousness that we have no access to, and to which, according to Freud, we could only have access through our dreams. Dreams have come to be seen as symbols, I suppose they always were an important doorway to the unknown, to the place where no one can go, but we know primordially, exists.
Why the grandiose affair? Was it an expression of an unfulfilled desire. A yearning to send him off in a grand style? a last goodbye? Was it mourning the way I wanted. Did I want to send him like a King - as he was for me - like a HERO.
I wish to cry the way I cried in my dream for my father. I yearn to shed tears and wail, and shriek in pain for the loss of that one man who was my best friend, my companion, my confidante and yes my hero, my mentor.
All women I have come across think their fathers heroes, knights, one and only do-gooders, exemplary men the world have never seen before. The truth is far from that. Our fathers are plain ordinary men struggling with life like every other man, trying to do their best. I suppose my father was no hero either. No larger than life superman that he seemed to me. As I grew older, he seemed to become more human and more real to me. He was less the fabled hero, and more a real person with all the contradictions and short-comings of a human being. How traumatic and heart-rending that very moment is! when one is faced with real person behind the persona! He is not the man I thought he was, they never are. What I'm trying to say is that we all believe our fathers are/were something more than the average men, the fact is they usually aren't.
The beauty of it all is - despite the reality check, despite the removal of rose coloured shades, despite knowing the ugly truths about a person whom you have idealized all your life - he rises from the ashes as a phoenix.
My father was a man. A man with faults, with short-comings, and with all those human failings. BUT, he was MY HERO, MY MENTOR, MY LIFE.....
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