 | | He's carrying his jacket over his shoulder. I get behind him and say, "Excuse me." He turns around, and it's my father. It hits me that I've just been to his funeral. I say, "But Dad, I'm not ready for you to be dead yet!" I wake up sobbing uncontrollably, thinking my father must be dead.
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Justin shared this dream with his wife in the middle of the night. At 6:30 in the morning, he called his father. His father answered the phone, and Justin blurted, "You're not dead!" After telling him about the dream, Justin told his father that he loved him very much. His father then told Justin that he loved him. It was a very moving moment for both of them that, a year later, Justin still describes with intense feeling. His father, whose Jewish heritage Justin has not followed, remains ill, and Justin waits for that eventual phone call that everyone dreads. In the meantime, both men have had the experience of facing the reality of death through Justin's dream, and of expressing their love for each other before it was too late. To make good use of the lessons of this dream, they could make a proclamation, such as "We express our love for each other," or "We are a loving family." This statement could continue to serve as a reminder of the power of Justin's dream and of the expression of love that came from it.
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As Justin discovered through "My Father's Funeral," dreams can often alert us to unconscious fears or desires about our parents that we may be ignoring or avoiding, and which, if expressed or acted on, can lead to increased closeness. This is often the case when divorce is involved. Thirty-five-year-old Bruce had the following dream nearly twenty years after his parents' divorce.
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