STORIES OF LIFE – The Portrait of My Father

Standing idly in a lush garden, overflowing with tall spruce and birch trees, colorful flower bushes, and climbing ivy, I suddenly noticed the portrait of a balding man hanging high up on the garden brick wall. As I gazed at the painting, from down below I found the cheerful face of the man in the canvas looking somewhat familiar to me. “Where have I met the real person?” I wondered. “Could he be a kin?”

As I pondered more about the beaming character staring at me from high above, suddenly, to my great astonishment, he smiled and nodded at me.
I was flabbergasted! How could this be? Yes, the face in the painting was indeed beaming at me!

After a long contemplation, it suddenly occurred to me to ask him, “Could you by any chance be the spirit of my father?”
I must add that having lost my father as a child, I did not remembered clearly how he looked. Thus, when I asked him if he was my father, he bobbed his head a couple of times and confirmed, “Yes, of course I am. You don’t know me anymore?”

I squealed with joy, “Hooray…! Then, controlling my emotions, I demanded, “Tell me, is Heaven nice?”

“Oh, yes. It is fabulous. I am exuberantly happy in my eternal home.”

I think he was going to continue talking, but I jumped awake with a thumping heart, and asked myself why my father should appear to me in a framed painting and not as a real person in my dream. Then I smiled shook my head and thought, only people with crazy imaginations would dream about such crazy stories.