October 16 -- Haunting

Yes, haunting.

Many people who have lost loved one to murder can be haunted by nightmares. Vivid visions of what happened to their loved ones are there, just as if you actually saw what happened. Especially if you have had to witness the trial of the suspects, there is enough evidence usually to give everyone nightmares.

Just hearing what happened to my father, without hearing many of the details, was enough to give me nightmares. I know that my mother had them for years. She would wake with a start over and over and over. I did as well. I saw with terrible clarity the gun, the shots, and the vision of my father, kneeling, falling over. It was vivid. It was horrible.

There is a  real push in our society, that we have to get over something like death. We have to go on, we have to act like all is right with the world...

A month after my husband died, my father-in-law told me... "You need to get on with your life, get remarried, and get on..."

I was floored, to say the least. This was his son... my husband, the father of my child... and I should get over him and get on?  How do you do that?  It has now been ten years, and I am still mourning. I don't know how you are supposed to get on with your life. Do you ever get over it?

I am still haunted by my father's death, I am also haunted by my husband's death... or not so much by his death, but by him. I still dream of him, just as sure that he is there as the pillow under my head. Is that really haunted? I mean, is that part of what is felt when someone dies? Remembering them so vividly, feeling that they are so close, so near that you can feel them. One night I felt that my husband was so close that I could smell him. I smelled his aftershave. I don't know if that was real or if it was a haunting... what would that be?

I know that my mother still dreams of my father. It has been over 45 years, and she still dreams of him so vividly that she feels that he has been near her.

Then there is the doppelganger. I see people all the time that look like my husband. Sometimes it isn't that they are the exact double, but they might look similar and walk similar, and to my eye, they are the same... Mom does as well... She was in the hospital for surgery, when she came to, she was pretty groggy, they were keeping her pretty sedated. Someone came into her room a few days into her stay and reminded her so much of my father that the next day, she relayed that he had been there. I didn't say anything to the contrary. I just said, oh, what did he say...

She couldn't remember anything except that he said he would come visit her again, and she didn't say much, after a while, she said... that wasn't your father, was it? ... no, Mom, I don't think it was.  There was pain there, for both of us. Her realizing that it wasn't her husband because he has been dead for so long, and me for him being dead, and worrying that I might have to tell her that he was... I just couldn't do that.

I haven't had the nightmare with my father being murdered in a long time. I don't want to ask mother whether or not she has. She is 93 now, and there is no way I could ask her. But on days when I think of him a lot, and let myself remember, I fear that I might. There is no precedent of that precipitating the dreams... but I never know what will set it off.

I've read the trial documents, and sometimes, the details are vivid.