Greetings friends!
I just wanted to post a favorite picture of my most cherished flower: the purple hydrangea….specifically for the “Theme of the Week” WordPress photo collaboration. I took this picture a couple of months ago as I was walking in downtown San Francisco. It was too beautiful not to capture on film. I am contributing this photo to a Friday photo competition open to bloggers on WordPress. I actually posted this picture in an earlier blog; however, I just could not resist giving it a little more ‘face-time’ yet again. The hydrangea is important to me for many reasons but most of which it is because this amazing flower reminds me of my father, Dick Faires, who left this earth in on April 22 nd, 1999.
I had a vivid dream over 13 years ago that I have never forgotten. It was about my father. I had the dream a few months after his death in April of 1999. The details of this dream have never left me. It was as if it was not actually a ‘dream’…it was as if the ‘dream’ was in actuality reality. I honestly felt his presence that night. I felt the warmth of his skin. Perhaps it WAS real…perhaps…
The dream went something like this:
I was walking in my father’s backyard, at the base of the White River in Indianapolis, Indiana, when suddenly the river began to overflow in the form of a flash-flood during a summer storm. The river’s water began rushing up onto dry land where I was standing. I was frantic because I was quickly being overcome by the rapid and turbulent river water as it began to suddenly rise. The mouth of the river began to pull me into its’ clutches ever deeper into more dangerous currents as I frantically tried to swim to safety towards the shore. I was trying to claw my way back to the shore to the safety of dry land; however, I was becoming more and more exhausted and fearful that I would soon succumb to its’ fury….when suddenly, out of nowhere, my Dad appeared. He put out one of his hands and I immediately grabbed onto it as if a magnet was forcing our palms and fingers together by an invisible force. The moment I felt his skin, the violent river instantly receded and turned to an expansive field of flowers….a vibrant, purple field of hydrangeas. It was at this moment that I was safe.
When I awoke the next morning I felt a sense of peace that had previously eluded me since my father’s illness and subsequent death. Somehow I knew that he was with me, perhaps in another dimension, but still with me….always, no matter where I went or what I was struggling through.
Every time I am blessed enough to be able to look at, smell, or touch a hydrangea my memory softens around the fact that I know my father is still with me….and always will be.
Have a wonderful and safe weekend my friends….new and old and yet-to-be-known.
Blessings from San Francisco,
k i m b y
Faires Fine Art 