I woke up about 5:15 a.m. today. This was not by choice or even because I had plenty of sleep. It was because of my dream. In my dream, my Mom called and said my father died. Then he sort of came back to life for a minute, but wasn't very well. It was awful and very disturbing. I couldn't go back to sleep and eventually decided to get up and shower. Then I put on the Christmas tree lights and played "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on TV, which distracted me enough to sleep for another hour.
It's easy to follow my thought processes which caused my dream. My father just had surgery and during the whole process I thought a lot about the what ifs. What if he has a heart attack during surgery. What if they rupture his vein. What if he develops a blood clot and has a stroke, or worse, a pulmonary embolism. Not pleasant concerns.
And yesterday I took a message for a coworker whose mother called. The coworker figured the message was either that his wife needed to send Christmas ideas or his Dad was sick. This man's father is not well at all -- as in given a set number of months left in his life. So I figure that message (incidentally, the message wasn't bad) plus my own idiosyncratic concerns of late combined together to cause my awful dream.
I've always been afraid of things happening to my parents, especially when I'm not around. I used to have panic attacks over this when, for a year, I lived four hours away from them. I like being about an hour away from my parents. It gives me some security in knowing that, if needed, I could be there relatively quickly. And it lets Autumn get to know her grandparents pretty well, too.
Thankfully, I have a beautiful little girl who keeps me busy and happy, so I don't have as much time anymore to dwell on the negatives. I know living and dying are all part of life, but when you love people, it's a whole lot easier to think about living.