Left unsaid

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Somewhere I read or heard that when you dream of someone no longer around it means you have unfinished business with them. Be that as it may...

Last night I dreamed of Dad. It was not good.

It was not good because I knew he was dead and I had a question for him which I never got to ask when he was alive.  That hurt. A lot.

My question?

Why?


Why what? you may ask me.

Why everything I wanted to ask him. Why did he decide to become a farmer? Why did he turn down the job in 1966 with IBM? Pick a subject. Anything. I wanted (and still want in many cases) to know why he did what he did.

 I don't know the reasons behind some of the choices he made. Some of the choices he made I can guess at the reasons. Some I know 'cause he told me.

Over the years, I've come to understand many of the things he told me about his choices. Now, I am older than he was when he died. I am more experienced and certainly more widely educated than he was. This has given me insight.

You should know here that some of the reasons he gave me for his choices, I reject. Did when he told me. Over the years I've seen no reasons to change my mind.

But Dad was Dad and he had to make the best of the choices he was presented with. I do the same. Under the exact same circumstances, he and you might decide differently. You may decide the same. That's what makes life interesting; we all make different choices.

I note Dad's dying still hurts ...

There's more to say and maybe, some day, it will be said.

One more thing to say about Dad's death. Thanks to the internet I have found a group of people who surrounded me when Dad died. They took me the same day I got back to college and made sure I got very drunk. I needed it. They saw I needed it and they gave me the support I needed.

Them's friends.

Considering my earlier FB post today about being Christian, you may wonder why I say that. I say it because it is true, I was not a Christian at the time and if it happened to me today, I'd get drunk again. When you get finished ripping into me, I'll show you  the Biblical command which directs a person to get drunk under such circumstances.