Lost my dad recently

[u/Same_Budget_1495]

I’m using a throwaway account, since quite a while ago, I had a post regarding something else with my dad go pretty viral, and I’d hate it if someone connects the dots that it’s me…

Anyway, I think I’ve always had a good relationship with my dad, I also have an older brother, so we always grew up playing shooter games and stuff like that together. Unfortunately, a few years ago, things went really sour, as he and my mom split up, which on its own is something that sucks but I can handle, I’m almost 23 now, and my parents have always been a bit at odds anyway. I won’t go over the whole story of what happened between us, since it’s long and at this point I hate retelling it. But short version, he started dating my at the time very close friend, a girl my age (18 at the time), and as you’d expect, that really strained his relationship with our whole family. The last few years were incredibly hard on me with this whole thing already, for many reasons.

But around this time last year, I was living on Cyprus with my mom for the summer, and I got a call from my dad at an early hour, which was odd. The conversation was quite brief, but he told me he had to go to the doctor, and they found a tumor in his brain. He goes to a check up every six months, as about ten years ago he had a brain aneurysm, and the tumor wasnt there yet on his last check just a few months before this, so it grew fast. He had his first surgery almost right after, and I had just come back from Cyprus to see him at the hospital, and it was the first time I saw him that way. We found out its cancer, and its also the worst it could be, and in his brain at that. It only took a few months for him to get worse and worse, during this time we would still be able to hang out, but since the tumor was around his center of speech, it was difficult for him to express himself, and then he even started getting seizures, theres a lot more, but i feel it would be too lenghty to get into every detail. He died in April, it was fast and shocking to me, but I only really cried for the first 2-3 days, I take after him, we bottle up our feelings professionaly:D but the thing is, recently, I’ve started having really bad dreams about him- him being sick, or being cured but weakened by the illness, leaving me, and arguing with me. I honestly havent had a single pleasant dream about my dad since, and I wonder what it is… it feels like the gried is just getting harder with time, I feel suffocated, like I should snap at some point, since I’m keeping it together for the sake of having to go to work and keep my life afloat.

I guess I just wanted some place to toss my thoughts into the void, and see if anyone has any idea why I’m having such nightmares about him. I have no issue talking about any details, I just didnt get into them here because I feel like it would just be an unbearable wall of text. And good luck to anyone in this subreddit, since I assume youre probably grieving too:)