Raivess

Well, this marks my return to Dream Views! Hopefully, after this week, I'll be back to posting all my dreams and actually trying to lucid dream!

I dreamed that I was back at my parents' house for a visit, and my dad was there. It seemed that I knew he was or had been dead, and he obviously knew he'd been absent for a long while.
He was walking through the downstairs of the house, trying out all the lights as though to make sure mom and I hadn't broken them in his absence. I followed him for a time, reassuring him that everything worked and that he'd left things in good hands.

Eventually, I left him to it and went to check out some boxes of my belongings that I must have left there when I moved out. While rummaging through these boxes, I spotted what seemed to be a massive toy spider. I was about to pull it out when I noticed that it was moving, and realised that it was real and very much alive! This spider had a red back and was easily 9 or 10 inches long, leg-span included. Now, I like spiders - I rescue them from the house and from work, and generally leave them alone if no one else has spotted them - but this monstrosity was not something I could cope it. I cried out for my mom to come and help (she's got no fear at all!), but she was obviously busy. I think I put the box down to go and convince her that whatever she was doing, this was more important, but before I could leave, the spider made it out of the box and scuttled off.
Finally, far too late, mom arrived on the scene. I explained, and we spent a few minutes poking around and trying to find/catch the beast.

Then I woke up.

I dreamed that I went camping with my mom. We gathered all the gear and were setting up the tent together. I remember thinking that everything would be a little different without my Dad there. Setting the tent up wasn't as easy, and the bedroom spaces seemed larger without him. It's the first time in a dream that I've really acknowledged that my dad is gone. It was in the back of my dream-self's mind that it was our first time camping without him.
In all the other dreams I've had so far, he was either alive or, at worst, dead but present.

Now, I really have to start noting my Dad as a reality check. Dead folks don't tend to appear in reality, so... Well, yeah...

We were in my parents' living room, as it used to be when my Dad was alive and healthy. (Come to think of it, it's probably the way it was when I was younger - the dresser was against the wall it used to be when I was a kid.)

Dad had bought a model set of a circus train, with the name of the circus brightly painted across the sides, and with open carriages for the animals. These models were incredibly detailed, but the carriages looked more like the carts you get at a fairground (like a waltzer) - Round, with a dip in one side that acts as the door (though how the elephant was supposed to get out of it, I couldn't tell you!) He was showing me the animals and how, if you turned them a different way, they sat in different poses.

I dreamed of my father. This is one of those dreams where you know - positively know - that there was a lot to it, but can only remember one stupid little detail. I remember dreaming of my dad. He was with me and my mom, and he was tired. We were at the top of a set of stairs, and he lay down right there, on the landing at the top, and went to sleep.

I think I dreamed of him because I wish I could talk to him. Whenever I was in trouble, or if I needed advice on something, dad was always the one I turned to. Lately, things at work have been tough, and his advice would have been of great use and a great comfort to me.

My partner pointed something else out to me. He said that perhaps I dreamed about him sleeping at the top of the stairs because, for the last few years of his life, he didn't sleep upstairs in his bed. He wasn't very well; he couldn't breathe very easily, and going upstairs made him too breathless and lying down was worse. So he slept downstairs in his chair, or at the kitchen table.