dreamt about my dad last night

We were staying in a hotel or something, and I was waking him up to take me to school. He woke up and said it was too early, and asked me how long it usually took my mother to get from where we were to school. He had all his hair and beard and mustache and everything. He was smiling in that muzzy not-awake way. He had all his hair. He was well, and young.

I've been waiting for the visit. Isn't that what the dead do? Mom dreamt that he asked her why his boots were still on the kitchen table (she's been cleaning and polishing them). If I've dreamt about him since April, I don't remember. This is the first.

Somehow I thought it would be more, you know. Profound. Don't worry, I'm okay. Or some advice or something.

Mom's friends are starting to make the get-over-it noises at her, and I'm furious on her behalf. They all gave their husbands up willingly. They don't get it that seperation through divorce and seperation through death are completely different things. And because her persona is so tough and no-nonsense (she calls herself the junkyard dog) they're not understanding why she's so adrift right now.

What they don't understand is that a big part of what made it possible for her to be so strong and so tough was the support she got from him. She could go out and fight the good fight, and know that even if he wasn't out defending the clinic with her, or marching on Washington in her delegation, he had her back. He was waiting at home to tell her she was doing the right thing. He was there with the bandages.

I'm pretty sad this morning, and I have four strenuous and very public days in a row coming up--catering a couple of jobs, modeling in Berkeley, doing the yearly skills assessment with my troupe director, lunching with my editor, and moderating a panel on radical comedy as part of a theater symposium. I wish I had a clone or two I could send out to do all that, leaving my original self free to head down to Half Moon Bay and stare at the ocean.

But this is how it is. The world does not stop. You get your little chunk of time, but then everyone expects you to get on with it. And the reality of the loss--the permanence of the loss--starts to really sink in.