Daddy Visits My Dreams: Remembering Our Loved Ones Who Passed Away

I dreamed about Daddy about three days after he died. It was such an emotional roller coaster that I still remember it in graphic detail years later.

The day I found out he passed away

I got the call on a Thursday night in September. I had just gotten into bed when the phone rang. My heart stopped. I think I knew before I heard the words. I knew who was calling before I picked the phone up. I knew what she would say before she spoke.

It was a nurse calling to tell me that Daddy had passed away in his sleep. She used the word “expired,” and I hate typing the word now as much as I hated hearing it then. She wasn’t trying to cheapen what had just happened, but I felt like it reduced his departure from this life to the kind of thing you read on a milk carton.

I felt numb. I didn’t break into a million pieces or melt into a puddle on the floor at that point even though I felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside. I had work to do. I had to go into “get it done” mode, and I did.

Getting prepared for the funeral

The next couple of days were a blur. I picked his clothes. A plaid button-down shirt with a suede vest he loved. He didn’t want to be in a suit. We thumbed through a million pictures and picked the best ones for the obituary and slideshow. We got songs together, and my brother recorded a song out in his backyard studio for the graveside service. Family, flowers, and food came. The service was beautiful. “Work mode” stopped. It was over. All of it.

About three nights after that dreaded phone call, I collapsed into bed. The finality of it all was so heavy. Exhaustion overtook me and I slept hard and began to dream.

Dreaming about my daddy

In my dream, I came upon Daddy in a crowd of people in my old elementary school gym. It felt like harvest festival time, and that made sense with the current season. The gym was packed with people from our community, many of the same people who had offered prayers and hugs over the last few days.

He was standing there smiling in the middle of them when the crowd parted. He was wearing the shirt he had on the last time I spoke to him. The same “Life is Good” shirt my niece took back home with her to Illinois. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak.

He told me, "I'm so sorry I couldn't get back. I love you, baby." He hugged me, and I noticed his hands were cold. That was it. He was gone.

What happens after you die?

I don’t know if anyone knows for sure what happens to a person’s spirit after they die. Theories are as old as time and as varied as all of the religions on the planet.

My own opinions on life and what comes after has evolved several times. What I don’t believe is that people are just gone after they die. They live on in some way, if not in a classic concept of spirit or heaven, then in other ways.

If it wasn’t actually him that came to me, maybe it was my conscience conjuring him to let me have a proper goodbye. Maybe it was God having mercy and giving me closure. Either way, it was him. He’s still here.

Every time I pick up a tool from his shed, he’s here. Every time we cry from laughter after repeating his stories, he’s here. Every time the sun catches my eyes through the pine trees of his pasture, it’s his light I see.