Nightmares about a Dead Parent

I had another dream starring my dad, and again, in the dream I knew he was dead and questioned others about how he could be speaking with us. Kind of a sad dream, but I'm not alone. For 64 weeks, I've wanted to see him again. This New York Times article from last year has been on my mind:

Grief itself is transformative. It is a process of disassembly. The bereaved must let go of the selves they were, as well as the loved ones they have lost. The dreams we have while grieving are an important part of that process.

“Our dreams have to do with how we internalize the people we love,” said Pamela McCarthy, director of counseling services at Smith College. “You learn to look within for the loved one and the particular function that person played in your life, such as caretaking or guidance in the case of a parent. This becomes part of a function that you can provide for yourself.”

Cultural narratives in regions like Vietnam and North and South America assign special importance to such dreams and consider them actual encounters with the spirits of lost loved ones.

Is it his spirit? Only in that it is him living on in his child. The learning to do for myself what he used to do for me is more complicated. After a loved one is gone, the tendency is to idealize everything about the person. The question I ask myself is, what did he do for me, and what do I need to learn to do for myself. I know his hopes for me, but I'm still working out how to be for myself what he was for me. It's a process, and even though these dreams aren't easy to digest, I think going through them may in the end help me figure out where I go from here.