Dreams

Maybe this is a bit strange, but I have been having dreams with my Mom and Dad in them lately. No it’s not a Freudian thing, it’s probably related to the fact that coming up on two months ago, my parents died in a car accident. Yeah, bummer. Major freaking bummer.

I am dealing with it, and trying to figure out how to feel about it. I am miserable in some ways, but I have yet to shed any tears. Some people might think this is weird. I kind of do myself. My sixteen year old daughter tells me I shouldn’t hold it in. I don’t really think I am.

It’s not a stupid macho thing either, it’s just that I guess I don’t really know how to let it go. You would think that after two months, I would be able to cry. 

So maybe that’s why I am seeing them in my dreams. The way I am seeing them is the way I remember them that last time I actually saw them face to face, which was quite a few years ago. I saw pictures of them, and I saw them on a Web-cam, I spoke to them on the phone frequently, things like that, but it had been a good number of years since I had been back to Ohio, to actually see them in person. So maybe it’s natural that I would see them that way in the dreams.

Another thing is that over the last couple of years, my Dad had gotten rather frail, and lost a lot of weight. According to my older sister, he was practically skeletal. I just can’t see my Dad that way, even though I did occasionally see some pictures, I had not seen any where he looked like that. I guess my subconscious wants me to keep me from seeing that image in my head.

Dreams are a  funny thing. In some ways these dreams comfort me, in other ways, they disturb me… Strange, isn’t it. 

Suddenly kidless!

Yesterday we took our 16 year old daughter Sandy to Dallas Love Field to fly back to Phoenix. As I mentioned here before, she had decided she wanted to go back and live withe her mother. Sue and I were not initially thrilled with the idea, but she is old enough to decide where she wants to be. Not only that, but she also has this ability to make others miserable until she gets her way.

Perhaps I am being too harsh, perhaps not. At any rate, she could be making a mistake, but she is getting to the age where she will have to learn to live with mistakes.

We were fortunate to get her a good price on a one way flight to Phoenix from Dallas. We were also fortunate enough to not have attempted to get a ticket on American Airlines. Unless you have been living in a cave for the last couple of weeks, you probably know about to nearly 3000 flights cancelled by American to fix a wiring problem in the wheel wells of their aging MD-80 fleet.

We got Sandy a ticket on Southwest Airlines. The flight took off on time, and apparently landed early in Phoenix.  She let us know when she landed, and then we figured that she would not call for a month or so. Strangely enough, she actually called this evening.

Time will tell if she will stay in touch or not. I suspect not, but I may be wrong. Anyway, she got what she wanted.

Now, Sue and I have found ourselves kidless. We had Sandy stay overnight a few times over the last 2 years, but it isn’t the same thing. We had sort of lost sight of who we are as a couple. We always had to deal with Sandy to a degree. She was 16 certainly, but she was high maintenance. Not that we didn’t love her, we do. It’s just that when you have a kid with major attitude problems, it takes a lot out of you to deal with it.

Sue and I are now rediscovering our sense of being a couple. We can actually spend time on our marriage. We had date nights from time to time certainly, but now we can concentrate on being us. As I said, we love Sandy, and we love Tara and Elisa.  We need this time though to be us.

We look forward to this time of rediscovery.

Keep the lines Open

(written Monday, March 3, 2008)

My wife Sue and I were just getting up from taking a short nap this afternoon, when there came a knock on the door. I opened it and there were two uniformed police officers and a plainclothes detective from the Colony PD. The first thing that went through my mind was that the schmuck across the street, or Sue’s ex dipshit had made some fake accusation against me, and I was going to be arrested. I was trying to run through my mind how I was gonna come up with bail

 

“Are you Mike Bacon?’ one of the officers asked. “Yes, I am.” I replied.

“Could we come in a talk to you for a few minutes?” he continued?

“Sure.” I said, thinking “What choice have I got!”

They came in and then the next question they asked me started a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

“Do you know the names Harry and Marian Bacon?”

“Yes those are my parents.” I sat down on the couch. “ Just tell me please, are my parents dead?” One of the cops looked down for a moment, and then met my gaze.

“Yes sir, I’m very sorry to tell you they are deceased.”

The then proceeded to tell me that my parents had been in a car accident that morning, and they had been killed. They only know that Mom had been driving, and had gone left of center, and hit an oncoming car.

I have to say that they were very compassionate, and caring. They gave me the contact information for the Ohio State Patrol Officer who had been at the scene, and offered to bring over a Police Chaplain if I needed one. I thanked them and let them know that I would be calling my pastor from my church. The left me a card, and let us know that if there was anything they could do to let them know.

So now I am taking it all in, trying to figure out where to go. Well. It now falls to me to contact both of my sisters. My oldest sister, D, is the executrix of Mom and Dad’s estate. All I know is that they wanted to be cremated. I called the cop, get the details, and found that the car Mom and Dad hit, had a couple and an infant, the infant had to life flighted to the hospital.

 

We were not to get any more news about this family. We are praying for them.

Now comes the aftermath. I go into “deal with it mode” I started making attempts to contact my two sisters. Patti lives in Arizona, and so does D. I have a work number for Patti. I called it and got her voice mail. I didn’t want to tell her via voice mail that our Mom and Dad are dead. I left a message asking her to call me that it was urgent. Sue called our Pastor, Terry to come.

Mom and Dad’s next door neighbor, Butch called me, apparently the Ohio Cops went there trying to find contact information. I guess he was the one who gave the police my information, or at least my name to track me down. After some back and forth attempts, he was able to find another neighbor that had a key to Mom and Dad’s house, and was able to get in and get me D’s cell phone number.

By this time though I had a brilliant idea on contacting Patti. I had left a second message, and still had not heard back from her. So I called the main number of the hospital she worked at, and told them I was attempting to locate a staff member with a family emergency. They got her on the phone, and I had to tell her about Mom and Dad.

She went to pieces over the phone. I told her I felt so bad that I had to be the one to tell her, but in one sense it was better to hear it from me, than form the cops, the way I found out.

Finally I got in touch with D. I told her, and when I got her on the phone I asked her if she was sitting down, and she told me she wasn’t I told her she had better.

She asked me if it was Dad. Dad had been in declining health of late, having had a heart attack a couple of years ago, and was in the hospital last November with low blood sugar. We finally determined he has Diabetes Type 2. He had not been eating properly.

Of late he was starting to come around. Mom had taken him for a shopping trip a couple of weeks ago. He was staying up, and doing physical therapy, and seeming gaining strength.

I last talked to Mom on Saturday, February 23^rd. I had tol her I was going to try to talk to her at least once a week, and keep in better touch. I meant to call her on Saturday the 1^st of March, and it slipped my mind. I was going to call her on Monday, but that was the day they died.

Sue doesn’t want me to beat myself up over that but it is hard. I am kicking myself that I didn’t take a few minutes out of my day to talk to my mother and father. Now I never will be able to. Sue and Sandy never got to meet them in person, but I know Mom and Dad loved them, and vice versa. I have to hold that in my heart.

I know that somehow Mom is up there watching over me, and so is Dad. I have to cling to that. Make sure you keep in contact with your loved ones. You never know when they won’t be here anymore. Keep the lines of communication open.