A Lucid Dream about my Dad

Me with my Dad, November 2011

I began this blog on the death of my Dad in 2012. I can't believe we are coming up to 5 years since he died. 

Last night I dreamed that I went to Dad's house to pick him up for Sunday lunch. I went upstairs to find him, and he was lying in bed with the newspaper over his face, he had fallen asleep reading it. I was worried for a second that he might have died, but when I picked up the paper it woke him up, he was fine. 

He was moaning about having to get ready to go out, and as I was making his bed I was saying, 'Dad, I don't know why you're making such a big deal, you're so much better than you were in the nursing home....' As I said it, I suddenly realised he had been in the nursing home because he was dying, and he had died, and so this must be a dream. I turned around and sat on the bed, and Dad said, 'what's up?' because I was crying. 

'I've realised this is a dream, and I don't want to wake up, I want to stay here with you.' I got up and hugged him and he put up with it (he didn't really do hugs). Sort of patted me on the back and said, 'you soft sod, you know you've got to go to work.' 

I tried to hold onto him, but I woke up. 

I've not let myself think about it all day, but now I'm home from work I keep thinking about it, because I want to remember how it felt, and how lovely it was - it was so real. But it means I can't stop crying. I feel like I've lost him all over again.

Deja Viewing

I think I've mentioned before how there's something about Timothy West that reminds me of my Dad. I watch him on his barge programmes, and on Eastenders, because sometimes (more often on the barge than on Eastenders) he'll do a 'Dad' look, or a smile, and it is sort of comforting. In the same way as stalking old men around Tesco's if they remind me of Dad is, but without the potential for freaking out innocent elderly men. 

Unsurprisingly, it was a bit of a shock to find out that Stan Carter, Timothy West's character in Eastenders, had prostate cancer (the cancer Dad died of). That was nothing to Tuesday's episode though. 'Old'Stan was a curmudgeonly character, not like my Dad at all. Of course, in true soap style, he has mellowed, and we have seen a more sensitive and vulnerable side to him of late. Then after all that softening up, what happens? He only suddenly goes off his legs, doesn't he? The exact same thing as happened to my Dad. It was horrific to watch, I went through all the emotions of that night again. Same cause as well - metastases in the spine. 

Now I get to watch my pseudo-Dad die in exactly the same way as my real Dad did. Not so much deja vue as deja view. 

At least if it gets too much I can change channel this time. Real life is a single channel you don't get to turn off.

The Unforgiven

I've been thinking about forgiveness a lot, for a long time, specifically because I don't think I will ever forgive Steve for what he did over those years. The internet is full to bursting with all these quotes about how wonderful it is to forgive - and just this ONE about the other side of the coin. I have thought and thought, and I have come to the conclusion that actually, sometimes forgiveness is NOT the right thing, and that is not because I'm not a forgiving person, but because I am a VERY forgiving person.

There has been lots of discussion on various forums I'm on about how to forgive your abuser, and I have found myself saying I don't plan to and doubt that I ever will, and that I am glad of that. In response, there have been lots of people saying that I should forgive him for myself, not for him, because otherwise the bad feelings will destroy me. To which I respond:

No, bad feelings won't destroy me, because I have no feelings towards him, as he isn't in my life any more. If he WERE to enter my life again, forgiving him would leave me open to abuse again, because that is exactly what happened in the past - time and again I forgave him, and time and again he abused me again. Now, without forgiveness, any contact with him leaves me frightened and wanting to run - and that is how I am MEANT to feel. This man is evil and he means me harm.

You see, that is what is the problem, it is the very essence of him that makes me not forgive him. When I said I was a very forgiving person, I wasn't just going on my own judgment. Son has before now said, 'Mum, sometimes I think you are TOO forgiving.' There was a recent drama because when I tried to clear the air with an ex-friend who had been spreading rumours about me, she graciously refused to admit that she had done anything wrong in either spreading the rumours or in ignoring me when I approached her to try to sort it out - and then lied about the whole incident afterwards, saying I had physically attacked her! In fairness, I would have if someone else hadn't intervened, but that was only because she was poking my chest like she was some badarse, and comprehensive girls don't let High School girls do that sort of thing with impugnity (she's bigly snobbish about schooling). I tell this story to show how I'm no slacker on the forgiveness front - the rumours were potentially very damaging -  that I was a drug addict, which is, when I last checked, incompatible with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy's Code of Conduct, even if social services didn't get to hear about it (there is already a file on me and my son because of the domestic violence); the fact that I could easily disprove them wouldn't have stopped the inconvenience and stress of an investigation from either quarter. Yet despite this, I was the one who wanted to make things right.

The thing is, I find it easy to forgive, usually. Then when I do, it is complete forgiveness - I don't have a little list in the back of my mind of what people have done. The worst I do is remember what happened and beware of getting myself into that situation again with that person, but as far as the relationship goes, from my point of view the slate is clean and I feel about the person and treat them exactly as I did before. To me, once you have forgiven a person, it's like you have restored the previous version of Windows - everything goes back to how it was before.

Reason being, I can easily see why people do the things they do, I can understand how we all have faults and hang-ups and that usually people do not act out of malice. In a selfish way, I would hope that people would forgive me and understand why I would screw up, so I do that with others. Also, usually people are in my life because I value them, so to not fully forgive would be like having a crack in a beloved vase and constantly looking at the crack rather than the vase.

For many years I struggled to forgive my mother - we had a difficult relationship for reasons which I'll probably go into in a post one day. Then one day I realised that she was a product of her upbringing, and her dad and gran were products of their upbringing, and back and back ad infinitum. It wasn't her fault she was the way she was. She would never be the mother I needed, but she was trying to be her best. But for various accidents of fate, I'd be the same as her, so who was I to judge? I'm not actually sure this rationalisation is the truth, but I've found it is the only way I can live with her in my life, and now she has dementia, it really doesn't matter what the truth is, she can't change anything now. So that is one situation where I have forgiven for my own sake - and for hers, incidentally, as if she didn't have me she'd be stuck!

Steve himself would say he didn't know why I was friends with certain people because of things they had done to me. In his typical disordered way, he has never forgiven anyone in his life. He doesn't have to - to him, people are either wholly good or wholly bad, and it all depends on whether he approves of their last action related to him. It wouldn't matter that I had paid to take us on holiday, and had spent the whole week doing everything I could to make him happy. If I then spoke to someone while he was outside smoking, that made me a bad person who deserved to be beaten. It wouldn't matter that his sister gave him somewhere to live for six months; if she then refused to lend him £5 she was an evil cow, always had been, and he HAD to move out. Conversely, if she had been refusing to let him see her and her son for a year due to his addiction, if she then gave him her old iPod she immediately transformed  into the salt of the earth, a really good girl.

This is part of the reason I can't forgive him. He isn't like other people. He hurts others not because he messes up, but because inside is a soul-less excuse for a personality. I've seen him transform into the devil himself, seen a reptilian persona slide over the mask of his human features. If I believed in demon possession, I'd believe I've seen it. Everthing he does is all about him, he has no genuine feelings for others. Not forgiving him is an act of self-protection and preservation.

Yet here are the definitions of forgiveness from Wikipaedia (I've looked at lots of other sites too, and they are very similar):
"renunciation or cessation of resentment, indignation or anger as a result of a perceived offence, disagreement or mistake, or ceasing to demand punishment or restitution."
"to grant free pardon and to give up all claim on account of offence or debt"

By those definitions, I have forgiven him. If I passed him in the street and he was on fire, I would piss on him. Well, I wouldn't, but I'd put him out. I have no thoughts of revenge any more. I bear him no malice in my heart. He has no place in my heart at all any more.

But wipe the slate clean? Oh no, never, not if I live to be a million years old, not even though it would most likely be a paper exercise as I doubt I will ever see him again.

Some people don't deserve my type of forgiveness. Which is a shame, because the only qualification is to be a person, not sub-human.