Some people don’t believe much in the value of dreams while others consder dreams a portal to something outside normal understanding.. I’m not sure I do either but eight years ago tonight I had a dream and for the first time ever I’ll tell about it.
Back in '72 I met a girl named Laurie. Laurie and I became great friends and over the years that friendship never wavered. We celebrated marriages, childbirths, funerals, tragedy and comedy together. At the age of 30 she died. I was 32. She’d been on dialysis most of her life and had beaten the odds but finally, her genetic illness caught up. I was saddened by her loss but always knew it would someday happen.
In 1999 I had another friend named Mitch. We’d been friends only nine years but it was a friendship far greater than the word can imply. I could write pages of the times we’d had. He was also my sister’s husband.
Friday, May 29, 1999. Mitch came over and we drank beer and had our usual laughing, fun time. He was living with his brother because he and my sister were in the middle of a divorce. Later that night his brother picked him up and I went to bed.
Saturday, May 20, 1999. I didn’t feel too well that day so when Mitch called and suggested I pick him up and we party again I refused. I told him I’d get him on Sunday and we’d have a good old fashioned Memorial Day cookout.
Sunday, May 21, 1999. My wife worked nights so I was alone when I went to bed Saturday nighte. I woke in the dark and there stood my old friend Laurie. She stood right between my bed and the bathroom door. She wore a white robe and she smiled her usual, half cynic smile.
“Laurie!” I exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
No answer.
“Wait, I thought you were dead.”
She answered “I am”.
“But you’re right here. We have to call your husband and son and let them know!” I was frantic. I had to let her family know she was right in my room and alive.
Now, suddenly my head was on her lap and I felt content while she stroked my hair and said, “Everything will be all right.”
Then I woke up. There was no Laurie but the lingering reality of a horrible dream where something had gone radically wrong.
I got up and went to the living room. I decided something must really be wrong and started looking up the phone number for her husband whom I hadn’t contacted in nearly a decade.
I was startled by the pounding on our front door. Nobody came to visit at 5:00 AM, especially pounding as if chased by the headless horseman.
It was my sister.
She said, “Sit down I have to tell you something.”
I sat.
“Mitch was shot last night.”
I leapt from the chair. “Where is he? Let me get dressed.”
“No. There’s no good way to put this…He’s dead.”
“Oh god. If I’d gone to pick him up then…”
“NO!” she shouted, “Don’t start that shit. You had nothing to do with it.”
I don’t remember where my oldest daugher was that morning but I had to go pick up my youngest from her mom to tell her.
We sat in my computer room and I tried to tell her what had happened but as I began I couldn’t speak. I began to cry with horror and frustration. I was DADDY and DADDY’s don’t cry. My little girl put her hand on my shoulder and said, “It’s Ok Daddy. Everything will be alright”…
The rest is a blur. My wife pretty much kept me sane for the next few months and a year later they found and convicted the killer.
I used to think of the many ways I’d make that bastard pay if given the chance. The Inquisition couldn’t come up with worse tortures. Now I don’t care. I don’t much like that my taxes are paying for his like in Michigans prisons but I don’t hate him anymore. I woudn’t do CPR on him if he were dying in front of me but I wouldn’t hasten his death either.
As Kurt Vonnegut said, “So it goes.”
So this memorial day I will drink a Budweiser (YUCK!) in his honor (because he loved the swill) as I’ve done for the past eight years.
Thanks for listening.
