Soo…my mother texted me the other day to see whether I had had any dreams about my father recently; she pointedly let me know that both of my siblings had dreamt about him in the last few weeks. I let her know I had as well. Mom asked what I thought that meant…. superstitious woman.
But I’ve had a thought circling for a while, one I haven’t looked at too closely.
It says something when your wife returns from living in Mexico and you have not. Now, there could be several reasons for this: they divorced, probable-he had issues and she was sweet; he’s here and keeping a low profile-he knows where his children stand-that is together without him-long story, another day; or, he’s gone. Like, gone gone.
Now before I go further, we, and I mean my siblings and I, have all had a deeply complicated relationship with that man. In short, he was a manipulative, self-serving, woe-is-me, con man. People I have known my whole life tell me what a shame it is I don’t make more of an effort to “repair the relationship,” like they have any idea what that was. Like they know the number of times we’ve all tried to reach out with an olive branch only to have it thrown back in faces. It’s like he thought we wouldn’t say “enough” and walk.
Remember a few months back when I mentioned a person had spread rumors about my involvement in Kevin’s accident? I had to shut that person down before that for trying to have a conversation with me about him… no. I don’t do that-offer personal info about myself to people I’m not close to and/or don’t trust- and I made it clear to them that was not a topic of conversation they were ever to approach me with again. I even told their supervisor about the confrontation and I expected them-the rumor monger-to keep their mouth shut, that any whisper of my name alongside my father’s and I would go straight to HR. The supervisor handled it.
But I digress.
This has been weighing on me-the not knowing and the likelihood that I know. I see my step-mother’s children and grand-children fairly regularly and I can ask. But I don’t. I don’t even ask about my step-mother, not because I don’t want to but because it can lead to questions about the absentee father. It really had been eating at me a bit and I wonder if it’s lead to some of the bad dreams that I had been having. I know I’ve been regressing to some bad habits and I need to put a stop to that. I even downloaded an app to help, but I’ll save that for another day.
Right now, I’m just going to keep going-minus the bad habits-speak to Kavi next week, and maybe have a conversation with Kevin. I’ll want support for the few good memories I still have and comfort for the anger and grief for the loss of someone who I said goodbye to years ago.
The Harrowed Heart 
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