Red Car

I keep replaying the last time I saw my father over and over again. I hugged him a million times and kept crying and telling him how much I loved him, and even though half of the strength he used to have was gone, the hugs were still just as strong. I wasn't sure if it would be the last time I would see him again or not. It definitely wasn't the first time I thought I was going to lose him, but it wasn't the time I thought I'd be losing my dad so rapidly. I didn't think he would be so...lucid, I guess.
I thought it would be the cirrhosis he had back in 2005. Before anybody could grasp what was happening, he was 80% gone. I hope most people understand what happens to the body when you have cirrhosis- I tried writing down the symptoms, but it rushes back too many memories and makes me sick to my stomach.
He was pushed up on the wait list for a new liver, had the transplant in 2006, and was back up and moving around in 6 months. Nothing could stop my father from doing what he loved (being a locksmith) and being around to cheer me and my sisters on in life.
It wasn't long after the transplant that I went to visit him while he was in recovery, a few days before they sent him home. He told me about a recurring dream he would have every night leading up to the surgery.
It was about a red car, which I always thought was strange because my father has never driven a red car- actually, he's had an electric blue truck the last 13 years. But in the dream, he would get out of the hospital bed, walk downstairs and get into the red car parked in front. He would start driving towards the west. He's driven across country before, but he specificially remembered the drive being different- he didn't recognize any of the roads, but he knew where he was going. It was like a secret road, that trailed along the Gulf Coast and went directly back to California, where me and my sisters were.
This dream never changed. He would always get out of the hospital bed and head to the West in the red car. He never actually got the the west coast though, he would only make it a thousand or so miles, then he'd wake up. After the surgery, he had it a couple more times. Only at that point, he wouldn't even make it that far. The trip kept getting shorter and shorter, until he stopped having the dream.
My reaction at the time was chalking it up to his crazy imagination, but since the cancer showed up, I started thinking about it a lot more. That red car was his escape from all the pain he was in, back to the people he loved the most.
He was in much worse shape back then than he is now, but it doesn't change the fact that the illness won this time. I never got to ask him if he dreamed about the red car again, but I think I know what the answer might have been. I can still see the frustration in his eyes when the doctor told him they need to add another pill or another transfusion to the balancing act keeping him alive. He was so tired and in so much pain. (None, thankfully, in his last few days.)
He continued the fight until he physically, mentally, and emotionally couldn't give anything else. I wish I could have stayed there, but I don't think my landlord, the phone company, and everyone else I pay monthly would have been as understanding of my lack of finance as I would hope they'd be. Not as understanding as my father, that's for sure. I kept telling him how sorry I was, and I'm not even sure why. Sorry for carving my name into his car when I was 3, sorry for pretending to be sick so he would have to pick me up from school & take me to work with him, sorry for not calling him more these last few months, and sorry for not staying as long as I should have. He just smiled and kissed me and told me how much he loved me for the millionth time.
I don't believe he's gone, not at all. I talked to him last week. I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be a bad dream, and that I wasn't leaving for New Jersey in a couple of hours. I'm not going to meet my sisters in Newark airport tonight & we're not going to walk into his empty, quiet apartment together. No. He'll be sitting there, laughing at some reality show on TLC and asking if we want some chicken cutlets, because he was always such an awesome cook and we could never say no to chicken cutlets and he knows that.
But if it is true, and my father is really gone...then I hope that that the red car was there for him when he went, and that he's already on the road back to me.