Wake up crying...
Jun. 14th, 2003 02:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sakon76I just dreamt of my grandfather. My maternal grandfather, who has been dead for several years. I've never dreamt of him before. He's sometimes visited my mother in her dreams, but....
My grandmother was not whole in her mind (in reality she often confuses dream with waking and doesn't always remember that I live with her) so I went to get my mother to talk with her. I'd found her in my half of the house, when my grandfather came out of the bathroom where he'd been fixing a cabinet door. The thing is, we both knew he was dead. My mother told me "Ask him," so I did. I asked him if he would come to my graduation ceremony, which I've not been planning to attend since no one in my family cares particularly about whether or not I walk or not. *I* don't care. But when he answered "No," I was so horribly disappointed. I asked him if he was proud of me (for having gotten a college degree, which I'm the first of his descendants to do) and he looked at me and somehow I knew what he was feeling, and it was a lot of a... it sounds stupid to write it as just "affection and pride," because it was so much MORE, but that's what it was. And then I woke up crying.
Grandpa Haakon was a difficult man to get to know. He was estranged from my parents (and thus from my sister and myself) for most of my life. He also lived in his native Norway most of the year, being divorced (though we did not know this until my grandmother went in for cancer surgery and told my mother, making her promise not to tell my uncle) from my grandmother. In his later years, he mellowed a little and my mother was able to get him to talk with her again, and thus I came to know him a very little. He was something of a harsh, strange man, twisted, I think, by the effects of both of the world wars in his life. Unlike we Americans, he didn't have the choice of not entering them. It's one of my small glows of pride that I am descended from a man who helped smuggle Jews through the Nazi lines in Norway. He was my grandfather, and I love him.
Though it may sound stupid to believe in such things, I've always understood why Grandpa was visiting my mother, sometimes, in her dreams. They were father and daughter, long estranged, and they had things to work out. I never thought he would visit me. And I never really thought about whether he loved me in more than a formal way, or whether my graduating from college might make him proud or not. I'm so happy he seems t have found enough peace to let me know these things.
My grandmother was not whole in her mind (in reality she often confuses dream with waking and doesn't always remember that I live with her) so I went to get my mother to talk with her. I'd found her in my half of the house, when my grandfather came out of the bathroom where he'd been fixing a cabinet door. The thing is, we both knew he was dead. My mother told me "Ask him," so I did. I asked him if he would come to my graduation ceremony, which I've not been planning to attend since no one in my family cares particularly about whether or not I walk or not. *I* don't care. But when he answered "No," I was so horribly disappointed. I asked him if he was proud of me (for having gotten a college degree, which I'm the first of his descendants to do) and he looked at me and somehow I knew what he was feeling, and it was a lot of a... it sounds stupid to write it as just "affection and pride," because it was so much MORE, but that's what it was. And then I woke up crying.
Grandpa Haakon was a difficult man to get to know. He was estranged from my parents (and thus from my sister and myself) for most of my life. He also lived in his native Norway most of the year, being divorced (though we did not know this until my grandmother went in for cancer surgery and told my mother, making her promise not to tell my uncle) from my grandmother. In his later years, he mellowed a little and my mother was able to get him to talk with her again, and thus I came to know him a very little. He was something of a harsh, strange man, twisted, I think, by the effects of both of the world wars in his life. Unlike we Americans, he didn't have the choice of not entering them. It's one of my small glows of pride that I am descended from a man who helped smuggle Jews through the Nazi lines in Norway. He was my grandfather, and I love him.
Though it may sound stupid to believe in such things, I've always understood why Grandpa was visiting my mother, sometimes, in her dreams. They were father and daughter, long estranged, and they had things to work out. I never thought he would visit me. And I never really thought about whether he loved me in more than a formal way, or whether my graduating from college might make him proud or not. I'm so happy he seems t have found enough peace to let me know these things.
