THE ETERNAL NIGHTMARE

They say after someone close to you dies that it should get easier to accept it as time goes by.  Suns rise and fall over the distant horizons.  Another day further away from the last time you saw them alive.  It hurts and it sucks.  My mother and I recently had a conversation that it should get better.  But the fact that my dad died almost 15 years ago still hurts just as it did the morning I found out.  But it doesn't help that I still have nightmares about it.  I think I've only told my sister once about a small part of this nightmare never really admitting it all.  And recently on a trip to New Orleans I had the nightmare in the car and startled my friend how abruptly I woke up and shaken I was.

Its never easy admitting your flaws.  But I think the death of my dad taught me to appreciate everyone in my life.  The good, the bad, and the ugly.  Sometimes I think I grow too attached to the people I care about because I don't want to lose them.  But at 26, I'm starting to think that I'm getting to the point where life starts taking things rather than giving them back.  But here is the nightmare;

I being to relive that fateful morning.  I was laying in bed and my alarm went off at 630am.  I didn't want to get up yet so I lay there a few extra minutes.  Randomly at 640 the phone rings and I hear my mom pick up the phone and quietly talk into the phone.  Then all a sudden I hear her scream and I get up to hear her frantically crying telling me that my dad had died.  She continues to run past me down the stairs to nanny's room.  It takes me a minute to process it.  The cold sweats drip down my face.  My hands and feet being to become numb and tingling.  I begin to cry I blankly stare down the stairs an start to walk down.  Suddenly the floor opens to a black hole and I immediately fall into it as I frantically try to hold on to the floor boards of the stairs but they begin to creak and fall in.

The black hole is like a long tunnel of memories. Each showing the different times I had with my dad and family.  Still crying I reminisce about the past.  As quick as the memories pass by, I'm out of the dark hole of nothingness.  I begin to open my eyes and I am in Grandma Shirley's house (dad's mom).  Sitting on the couch with my sisters; Nicole holding my niece Katie, Jamie while my brother sits in my moms lap in the small chair across from us.  My grandparents sitting close by with my dads siblings and my cousins.  I smile and hear the laughter of everyone like old times at Christmas time when we would all get together.  Grandma call's for my dad "Mark come out here" but he doesn't show up.  She calls again but no response and he doesn't come into the living room with us.  The room all of sudden becomes silent yet everyones mouths are still moving.  I look around confused and lost.  The rooms beings to spin slowly and I hear my dads voice calling me from outside.  Only his voice was the one I would hear at my tee ball games.  " Come on Anthony!  You can do it..."  "Hit the ball"

I stand up and no one notices me walking away.  Its like I didn't exist.  The room becomes cold and lonely.  As they sit there, they don't see me, they don't hear me, or feel me grabbing all of their arms trying to get their attention and tell them that I hear my dad outside.  I look around the house and I can't find him anywhere. Desperately walking towards the backyard, there was nothing there either.  Just the large pine tree and the tire swing swaying in the wind.  The clotheslines creaking as the wires scrape the medal poles the support them.  Finally I hysterically  open the front door of the house and look around for my dad.  Sadly nowhere is he to be found.  My last resort, I go outside the wooden fence and look to the left down the curve of the street but he isn't there.  Only the neighboring houses and the cars parked in their driveways. Looking down at the concrete with my hopes dwindling I consider giving up. Suddenly I hear him call my name.  His voice was coming from behind me.  He stood under the pine trees and angel oaks about 100 yards down the long straight away that led to my grandparents house.

Paralyzed, I stare at him in disbelief.  But he was there.  The greatest dad you could ask for was standing right there in front of me.  A rush of energy flows through me and I started to run towards him.  I soon grow tired and I realize that he was getting further away.  Time begins to speed up and the sun that started at sunrise was quickly moving to the mid-day position in the sky.  Despite getting more and more exhausted I keep running.  Attempting to get a hug and jump into his arms again.  The sun slowly continues to descend towards the horizon and there is nothing I can do.  The cold gets even more brutal.

The last bit of sunlight fades below the distant land and I fall to the ground.  My knees and hands are scraped from the road that I fall on.  I look up and I see him in his paramedic uniform.  The way I remember him best.  But before I know it, his body disappears and I see his face one last time before he fades into the invisible.   I devastatingly  hear him call my name one last time.  The colors of the sky being to darken and the street lights that line the road begin to slowly turn on one by one.  The pain rushes into my chest, my heart, my soul, my future, the emptiness of being without him.

I ball my eyes and hear my mom scream behind me, looking for me.  As I muster the strength to get back up and walk back to her and my family the street starts to crack and buckle beneath my feet.  The ground crumbles beneath my feet and I look up at my mom as I fall into another black hole and I wake up.....

While most will read this and think it is nothing or just something small.  It's the nightmare that keeps me awake at night.  Its the nightmare that abruptly wakes me up in the middle of a nap.  Its what still gets me nearly 15 years later.  I hope that maybe telling people about this personal trial will help them with the losses they have endured and the pain that still lingers years later...