Warming this is kinda heavy and has been weight on me for a while...

I don’t know why my mind has wondered where it has for the past few days, maybe too much Winchester Angst (if you were cool and watched Supernatural you would get that). But all the Winchester Angst got us discussing souls and deals with the devil and fathers and children. And it reminded me of the first time I ever really knew that the devil was real. Concrete and very real.

My dad died when I was 18, 11 years ago come this March. I was home for spring break my freshman year of college. It was sudden, and even all these years later I can’t decide if that was better or worse than loosing my Grandma slowly two years later. I never really got to say goodbye either way.
 
I loved my dad with all the heart a daughter has for her father. And maybe a bit more because unlike the man who gave me life, my daddy chose to love me, to raise me, to protect me. He was, in many ways, my everything.

After he died, I was so lost, still am to some extent. I don’t think a week goes by that I don’t wish out loud just to have my Dad back. But right after, when the pain was so real that I could I have cut off my own hand and never noticed, I dreamt of my dad. The kind of dreams that you know are more than just a dream.
 
Both dreams happened the same night. I was home for the summer that same year, sleeping in the same bed I had since before high school. The first dream had me “waking up” and going down the hall to our living room. And there he was sitting on his end of the couch smoking a cigarette as he always did. My mind knows he’s gone, but there he is. I run back down the hall to my parent’s room to tell my mom, and there he is again, on his side of the bed like everything is normal and maybe the past 3 months of my life have been the dream, and this… this is real.

But it flashes and suddenly I’m in my kitchen with mom, like a lot of afternoons in high school. She’s going through the mail; I’m just shooting the sh%t The front door opens and in comes my dad, as he did countless of days in my life. He’s in his suit and tie, he’s got his briefcase in his hand. My mom doesn’t even look up, but me, I know this is Dad, and I know he’s dead, but he’s here again. I beg him to stay, I tell him I love him and please, Please stay. He looks at me with such pity and such love. He says he wishes he could but he can’t. That he loves me and then he’s gone. He’s freaking gone. And I’m awake.

Wide freaking awake, because that was too real to be anything but him. It’s a feeling in my gut, which to this day, remains. And I know the feeling, the desperation of the begging, the needing for my Dad, because its still here, just a little quieter now. But that night, after I took some time to calm down, I fell back asleep.

This time the dream was unlike any I’ve ever had before or since. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It was completely black. No visuals at all, nothing save a voice telling me that he could give me back my dad for one day, but I would have to trade all my other memories of him for it. I can still feel the weight of that choice on me. Would it be worth it? And at the time, I would have traded my soul for my dad, and looking back perhaps that’s what I could have done. But before I could speak, before I could say yes, because I know I would have said yes. I woke up… again wide freaking awake and now I’m scared, because I’m not stupid and I know what just happened. I’m not going back to sleep because the devil just offered me a trade. The devil just tempted me with something I didn’t have the power to say no to. The devil’s real and his ruthless. But God, who I’m still angry with over taking my dad in the first place, God showed me His Mercy and His Love because he woke me up. He couldn’t take away my free will, but he could break the deal before it was struck.