I’ll never be ready

This one hurts a lot…

I had a dream about Alex this morning.

He was little. Young enough that we still had him in a stroller, but old enough to walk and to want to do things on his own. He was wearing his blue baseball pajamas—the light blue shorts and the T-shirt with light blue sleeves and a white front with thin vertical blue stripes.

We were out jogging somewhere that felt like a greenway. I was pushing him in the stroller and we had been going for a while when we made a left turn.

Not long after that, Alex asked me to stop.

I asked him what was wrong, and he told me he wanted to go back and get some chips.

So I stopped. He climbed out of the stroller and the two of us started walking back together.

When we reached the turn, we went right, heading back the way we had come.

Then Alex told me he wanted to go get the chips by himself.

He could do it.

I remember looking down the path in front of us.

It was so long.

There wasn’t really anything else there. Just a road stretching farther and farther away until it seemed to disappear into the horizon.

I looked at him and told him that I knew he could do it.

I knew he could.

But it was such a long way, and I didn’t want him to go alone.

Could I please go with him?

That was when I made myself wake up.

I didn’t want to see what happened next.

I kept thinking about the dream afterward, especially while I was driving to meet Daren for breakfast.

I’ve had dreams about Alex that absolutely crushed me. Dreams where waking up meant losing him all over again.

And I’ve had the opposite. I’ve had the dream where he suddenly appeared and surprised me, and I got to wrap my arms around him again. For a little while, he was simply there, and I could hold him.

This wasn’t either of those.

There was nothing frightening happening to Alex. He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t asking me to save him.

He was my little boy, standing there telling me that he could do this by himself.

And I believed him.

That may be the part that has stayed with me the most.

I wasn’t telling him he couldn’t go. I wasn’t telling him he wasn’t capable. I knew he could do it.

I just looked at that impossibly long road in front of him and couldn’t bear the thought of him walking it alone.

I wanted to go with him.

Maybe I needed to go with him.

There is still such a strong part of me that wants to be beside Alex. I am his dad. Wherever that road leads, however long it is, there is a part of me that still believes I should be walking it beside him.

Not because he needs me to show him the way.

Not because I don’t believe he can make it.

Just because he is my son.

And because I still want to walk beside him.

I don’t know that the dream was trying to tell me anything. I don’t know that dreams work that way.

But this one left me with an image I can’t shake: my little boy in his blue baseball pajamas, telling me he can make the journey on his own, and me looking down a road that disappears into the distance and asking him one more time:

I know you can do it.

But can I please go with you?

Today is already a difficult day.

And this morning, more than anything, I just wanted to stay beside my boy.