Talking To My Dad

~ beetleypete

I slept in late on Friday morning. Something had woken me up earlier, probably the gales, and I didn’t get back to sleep until almost 6 am. That meant I was still asleep at 10:45, when Julie decided to come in and wake me up.

As soon as I was old enough to have an opinion, I didn’t get on that well with my Dad. By the time I was twelve years old, he was working away a lot, as a sales and promotion executive for a record company. When he got home late on Friday nights, he seemed to resent the fact that my Mum and me had coped well enough without him all week, and his frequent absences made us grow closer together.

When I was fifteen, he moved us out of London to a house in Kent, as he felt our rented flat was too ‘down market’ for him in his new job. A year later, when I turned sixteen, he bought me a used car, even though I was too young to drive it legally. He liked to boast to people about that. He had become a rather boastful man, taking any opportunity to name-drop the various stars of the record business that he had dealings with.

By the time I left school, we were hardly speaking. Despite that, he got me a job through one of his contacts, selling records. That was so he could tell anyone who would listen that I got the job because of him, and not because I was any good at it. When I was nineteen, I moved out and shared with friends, mainly to avoid having to be around him.

Then not long before my twenty-fourth birthday, he left my Mum, saying that he believed he was in a mid-life crisis, and needed his own space to think. We knew there was another woman of course, and it didn’t take too long to discover who she was, and where they were living. I never spoke to him again after that, and he died when I was thirty-seven.

With that in mind, it was very strange to be dreaming that I was talking to him last night. He was in another room, and calling to me to bring various things in to him. When my wife came in to wake me up because I had overslept, as I opened my eyes to look at her, my Dad’s voice seem to be coming from her mouth. It was the end of a dream, no doubt. That moment when you wake up feeling as if you have been ripped from another place.

A place that seemed very real. As real as the reality of waking up in my bedroom this morning.

56 thoughts on “Talking To My Dad”

  1. As much as there’s mystery around mankind, there’s absolute mystification around dreams!
    It’s definitely not always about our thoughts, right?
    Well, beautifully composed and intriguing blog!
    Thanks for sharing your story, mate!

    Stay blessed! ☺😇
    -theinkwarrior

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  4. I had a dream about my Dad but knew it wasn’t real as the ‘Dad’ in my dream was left handed and my Dad was right handed. Dad comes to me in my dreams usually when I’m troubled. We had a good relationship and I miss him. He died the day after my 40th birthday in 1996.
    I dreamed about my Mum too shortly after she died in 2018 and we were changing her bed when I noticed the sheets were threadbare and needed replacing. She looked me straight in the eye and in that matter of fact way of hers said ‘I don’t think that really matters now, do you?’

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    1. I dream much more about my Mum, as we were very close, until she died in 2012. Dreams about her tend to be comforting, whereas dreams about my Dad are usually confrontational.
      (Many thanks for following my blog, by the way)
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  6. I can still have dreams that will leave me questioning whether or not it is reality, and can take some convincing otherwise on occasion. However I happy with the reality that I haven’t spoken to my own Dad for more years than I can remember and hope he doesn’t end up in a dream any time soon 🙂

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    1. Thanks, Mary. Sometimes, I wish I could turn off my dreams, or select a favourite ‘dream channel’. As you say, they invade our subconscious without permission, and can often be very disturbing.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  8. I appreciate your candor about your father and your relationship. Too often people speak glowingly about their departed parents which always silences me. I guess there is a strong “don’t speak ill of the dead” thing in a lot of people I know. Why not I always wonder.

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    1. Thanks, Elizabeth. My Dad was a Jekyll and Hyde character. Extremely popular socially, with his circle of friends, and his side of our extended family. At home, he dominated the TV, said and did whatever he liked, ridiculed me and my Mum, and had a string of affairs that lasted for over fifteen years. As soon as I was old enough, I made sure to tell everyone what he was really like.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  9. When we’re young we don’t really know our parents as people, they’re just Mum and Dad. I wish I’d known my dad when I was older, as he died when I was 19. Like you, I never really got on with him when I was young. Sad, isn’t it?

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    1. I last spoke to him when I was 23 years old. I hadn’t seen him for almost a year when his car broke down in Sidcup, and he had to phone and ask me to pick him up, as a last resort. We drove for five miles in complete silence, and he got out the car and said “Thanks”. I never spoke to him or saw him after that. For me, it was a relief that the tension of him being at home had gone.
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  10. I was working on stage at the Orpheum when I was paged for a phone call. When I got to the middle landing, there was my dad and he greeted me and evaporated. By the time I picked up the phone I knew my dad has died. He had just gone out to do his chores and dropped dead.

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  11. Dreams are a fascinating subject. I always enjoy the dreams where I’m a good friend of a celebrity, and we just sit around and chat about whatever crosses our mind. Sometimes, though, dreams are frustrating, as when I’m trying to write fiction in my dream, and it’s just not coming together the way it should. My favorite dreams, though, are the adventurous ones where I’m driving on a perilous (but awesomely scenic) mountain road, or jumping hills and dripping into ravines on a dirt bike.

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    1. It sounds as if you have some good dreams, David. I don’t do many adventurous things in mine, as I tend to ‘relive’ the past in most of them. I haven’t been able to change anything so far though. 🙂
      Best wishes, Pete.

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  12. I was closer to my mom than my dad but my dad was a wonderful and caring man that just could not express his feelings very well.
    I dream about my mom once in a while but very seldom dream about my dad.
    Dreams can seem so real as yours seemed to be and can be very disconcerting!
    (sorry about your dad and the way he was with you and your mum,)

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  15. I completely understand. In the last several years, I have been revisiting the past in my dreams with the clarity that lingers long after I am awake. I can’t say they are nightmares, just a time machine, and I am left to ponder my past….

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  18. Like GP my dreams slip away as I get up, which, if I’d dreamed about my Dad (saw rarely until I was 7 then not at all ) or my step Dad (who cheated with Mums best friend and got caught out on Mums 60th Birthday) I am quite happy to not remember.

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  19. I was never close to my father at all…he was never home and my Mom had to work two jobs to keep the family afloat…..plus he was a super conservative so we did not see eye to eye on politics either…..so I never dream about the man. chuq

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