I’m in my parents’ living room, lying on the floor beneath an oil portrait of my dad that hangs high on a wall among paintings he created as a college student. I can hear Daddy talking on the other side of the wall, in the kitchen – he sounds happy but I can’t make out what he’s saying. As I watch, his face and body in the portrait rapidly age. He’s dying and I am paralyzed and I finally realize I am dreaming. The portrait, which doesn’t exist except in my mind, disappears as his voice goes silent. A grainy slideshow of his life appears in its place. I wake up gasping.

A ringtone sounds, the mechanical quack, quack, quack of a duck call. Mom’s eyes are round, mouth open, her face glazed with shock. Quack, quack, quack, Mom set that ringtone for Daddy because he loved duck-hunting. I hold my breath as she moves with deliberation across the room to answer. From her end of the call I understand it’s someone at my dad’s office, the firm that bears his name -- they’ve finally boxed up his belongings, could she pick them up? Crushed, we resume our board game. After dinner she cries as she resets her phone so the office number will ring with the default tone. Nobody sleeps that night.

I’m in a noisy room full of people with Daddy but know that I’m asleep, that I am having a lucid dream. He’s right in front of you, I think to myself in the hubbub -- there he is. What do you want from him, you can ask anything, say anything, now’s your chance. I reach for him and exhale into his solid yet soft embrace and feel his chest rise and fall with his breath. Daddy never stopped hugging first and I hold onto the dream.

Shelley Johansson lives, writes and sews in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.. Her creative nonfiction has been featured in Rejection Letters, The Bitter Southerner, Points in Case, Lumiere Review, and the Prairie Schooner blog. Find her on Twitter at @shelleyjohansso.