Paranormal Story Archives
September 2002 – Page 25

Daddy's Little Tomboy
by Melissa P.

My father was an alcoholic whose death a few years after our moving out was no surprise. What control he did have was on account of us, and he fell apart even more in our absence. He had been suffering all kinds of sicknesses due to his alcoholism, and my sister's and my attempts to clean him up and start him over were useless. Eventually we gave up and knew it would only be a matter of time. When we got the phone call… knowing that it was bound to happen was no consolation.

For months after his death, I was plagued with the idea that my last words to him were, "You don't love me." That day I had gone over to his apartment to take him to a doctor's appointment only to find empty gallon bottles of Jack Daniels carelessly thrown into his trash bin. I was young and deeply hurt. As I stormed out of his apartment and he told me he loved me, those cold words were the only response I could muster. After that day I never spoke to him again. One particular night, in my guilt, I cried to my boyfriend how I just wished I could have a sign that he didn’t hate me or remain angry with me when he died. I just wanted one sign he understood - and that night I got it.

I have always looked at my dreams involving such things with a skeptic's eye, but the dream I had that night, I wanted to believe and do, whether it was my own grieving mind’s creation or the result of my father’s answering my last request of him. I dreamt that night that I was with my father taking him to a doctor’s appointment. Somehow in that strange confused manner dreams always twist, he and I broke into a huge physical altercation, where I ended up throwing him out of a window. Remorseful for the way I had treated and hurt him, I went outside the building, helped him up and hugged him saying, "I just didn’t know what to do, and I thought I was smarter than that." He let go of me, not saying a word, and took a few steps away from me with a smile on his face. He picked up a football that was sitting on the lawn threw it to me to catch, and walked across the street as I returned to the car to go God knows where. I always was daddy's little tomboy.

I woke crying, but comforted that I said what I needed to, and felt that his somewhat corny gesture of throwing me a football somehow made up for all the times he wasn't well enough to play with me when I was younger. I felt he had resolved the situation for me and let me know that no matter what I did to him when he was alive, that he loved me as only a dad could, and he knew I felt the same for him, no matter what I said in the temper of my youth.

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