I had a dream last night about my father. It's not so unusual - I have really vivid dreams and since my Daddy died six and a half years ago I have dreamed about him alot.

Alot.

What was interesting last night though is that my son was in the dream as well. My father died in 1999 and my son was born in 2001 - they have never met. I have a picture of my father and I on the refrigerator (taken six months before he died and he looked 100% well) and I tell my son that is his Pepere and we talk sometimes about things my Daddy taught me. A couple of months ago I showed my little boy how to crack an egg the same way my father showed me (with a fork, over a bowl - never on the side of the bowl) and now he says he does it the way his Pepere did.

It's a little thing, a little thing so he will at least have some idea of who my father was.

In the dream we were in a department store, walking around, looking at the displays - someplace like the stores of my childhood: Penneys, Sears, Montgomery Ward. We walked into a section set up like a child's bedroom with a bed and some toys and we sat on the bed while my son reached for things to look at. My father asked him when he wanted his birthday to be (strange question) and he said December 14th - and then he launched into a list of the things he wanted to do including eat something like bacon and chicken. And my father and I started laughing because he's 4 and it was cute and then we were all laughing. And then I woke up.

It was like my father was getting to know him in my dream. It was -------- it was something, but I don't know what.

When I write, I invariably write about my father, even when I'm not trying. In my essay in Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans I write about how my father loved Louis Armstrong's music, in my flying book I write about what it was like to lose him. In the books I am writing now, both of my female protagonists are separated from their fathers - one through death (like me) and one through divorce (like me). He's everywhere, always. It used to bother me but I've learned that this is just how it is - you never get over losing a parent you loved, you just learn to live with the never getting over it.

Roseanne Cash knows what I'm talking about.

My father died on June 5th, 1999, one week after his 60th birthday. That's when I learned that when cancer wants to kill you, it will; not matter how strong you are, not matter how hard you fight. If it wants you, it will have you.

And sometimes still, I'm real angry at God and the saints and the world around us about that. I'm angry and I'm sad beyond all reason.

NOTES:

Check out the Times-Picayune this Sunday for a review of the NOLA book (we hear they really liked it!) And also, failbetter has accepted my short story, "Our Missing Airman" and will run it in the next issue. It's an excerpt from my AK flying book (still tentatively called Flying Cold and I still don't like that title). It's so nice to have someone say that really, for this story anyway, I am a good writer.