I thought about writing again about the Buck Eye story and some other similar tales but I have to clear my head of something else.
Last week while sleeping at my parents’ house I had two nightmares. One tried to latch onto me not knowing that I wouldn’t run from it but instead I would embrace it.
It happened the night following our visit to the cemetery to see my father. I heard him call for me to help him. His voice sounded as it always did whenever he wanted me to give him a hand with something.
“Joshua, give me a hand for a minute.”
You never knew until you got into it whether that was a legitimate 60 seconds or 6,000.
In the dream I knew he was gone and had been for the entire five years since we buried him, but I went forward anyway because Dad needed help.
Went forward thinking something was wrong and that after five years he was going to look like hell, but we do for family. And dreams aren’t subject to the laws of reality so I thought maybe there is something, maybe he is stuck between here and wherever we go after.
Maybe my threatening the Angel of Death, Lucifer and any one else that wanted to fight for him did something. So I went forward into something very ugly that I knew was going to be very bad.
I didn’t want to, but he would have for me so I went because sometimes we have to do hard things.
Old Friends
I didn’t get to see as many people as I wanted while I was home but I did get to see three old friends. I met one on the first day of kindergarten, one when we were thirteen and the other from high school.
Thought about it while I paid $60 bucks to fill the tank while the guy across from me rattled on about how no one in LA has a friend they have known for more than five years.
It is simply not true. I have many and I am not that unusual or special enough for me to think it is unusual.
But that doesn’t mean I am ungrateful or lack appreciation for the gift of old friends because there are those who don’t have them.
It requires some work and some effort to maintain such relationships but it is worth it.
These are your people and they have known you long enough and well enough to have seen you become who are.
You have also witnessed them becoming whom they are and that provides you all with some insight and connection that can be invaluable.
As I mentioned to one if you get married a 4th time I hope to regift you with something you regifted to someone else
Alternatively you might get a rice maker, juicer or other kitchen device that was very cool in the nineties but has been replaced by something cooler now.
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I had the second nightmare a day or two after the first one. I won’t bother trying to describe it here because it would require the sort of detail and effort that would leave you asking me to tell you the time and not how to build a clock.
In some ways it was more frightening and disturbing than the first one. It woke me up and for a brief moment I still felt that sense of fear and then I grew angry.
I reminded myself I was on vacation and that this nonsense was unnecessary. When I closed my eyes and I told my mind to either really bring it or leave me alone.
That probably sounds silly, but at 3:30 something you are not required to try and sound logical, eloquent and or rational.
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