Dreaming of Sugar Plums

Some thoughts on the death of my father

I had a dream last night that I was waiting in line to buy burgers with my dad.

It was a really ordinary sort of thing. He had mild complaints about various things, like the menu screen rotating through different images too fast, making it hard to read. I suggested we bring up the menu on our phones, but that was predictably easier said than done. We got to the front of the line before he was fully ready.

I was pleasantly surprised to see a limited-time burger called “Mother Goose” based on the David-Bowie-inspired character in Philip K. Dick’s semiautobiographical novel VALIS. It didn't much matter what was on it; that’s what I wanted. I’m a fan, after all, of both of those guys.

I remember commenting that it was crazy how this burger place had two different PKD-themed burgers at once since they usually just had one celebrity per burger. They marketed the “Mother Goose” burger as a Bowie thing, so I guess that’s how they justified it. It was a fiction-themed restaurant so they wouldn’t just have musicians without making a connection like that.

Anyway, pretty mundane stuff.

The thing is my dad died yesterday, on Christmas Eve.

It didn’t feel like a “visitation” dream, just the usual sort of dream I might have about my dad. I don’t feel my dad’s presence around me any more than I feel like today is Christmas. In either case, I can psych myself up into feeling something, but I know that’s all it is. We play pretend to give weight and texture to our personal myths, the stories we live by.

I don’t know how the loss of my father will affect my story exactly, but I can tell one thing: I’ve entered a new phase of my life. It happens that quickly.