The Dream
I didn’t think of it until after the girls were fed breakfast and I was thumbing through some CDs for our morning music. Then it hit me like a flash of light. The instances condensed and focused on my memories and filled me with jarring emotion. I became drenched with warm remembrance of my brother.

It was the closest I had been to his soul since New Year’s Eve on the phone when I last told him goodbye. I told him, “It is ok to go now.” The tender child-like hand that clenched mine through a fine black cloth reinforced me with hope and maybe even some faith.

The dropping lights, the dancing dolly, and the bear hug were all him. I could picture his scrawny body playing the ghostly tricks on us, but I was never given the gift of actually seeing him. All of those are still memories gone. Curiously, never once did I recall the sick body in a bed or wheel chair, which is refreshing now as I write.

It amazes me how these feelings can bury themselves so deep into me just to be launched to the surface at the drop of a hat. The dream is overflowing with conscious reminders replaying with meanings and symbolism, interweaved with current discussions and happenings.

I am writing as if in a dream. The way we recall the segments in overlaying fragments; unaware of the chronological order unless clues are given.

“I haven’t had an uncontrollable break down for a long time... I am handling my emotions well, being true to myself.” I told my counselor proudly. Honestly boasting at the time. I said that two days before the sleeping movie played in my skull. She wanted me to still “check-in” in a month or so. It has been almost two months of physical and mental awareness of my feelings since I started seeing my counselor.

At the first appointment I was confronted with her question, “When you are depressed, do you ever think of suicide?”

“If anything, I fear death more because of Zach.” was my answer. It was the same statement I made to co-workers the day before this dream. We were speaking of people we knew who had loved ones that had committed the fatal deed.

“If there is life after death, and you can communicate to us, what will be the sign to me, so I know?” I requested from Zach at our last visit with him in Colorado.

I was in a room with no windows. There was construction in silent progress surrounding me. Boxes and various items were scattered, unorganized, stacked haphazardly. The only light in this room came from brand new contemporary track lighting. There were two strips, perpendicular to each other. I was standing, talking to Derrik on my cell phone, scheduling a time for us to meet with one another.

I glanced upward to my right at one of the lights on one of the strips. As I spoke into the phone the same light I was watching, twisted and fell to the floor. Fear flooded me more than wonderment.

“What the hell?”

I looked at another light on the other strip and it also repeated the twist and drop that the first light had performed. I remember thinking that maybe I had some sort of telepathic control on the items. I felt that it was a dream where I possessed special hidden powers.

“Two lights just fell from the ceiling.” I told Derrik hastily.

He laughed.

I paused, then attempted to continue with whatever it was I was just talking about. Still thinking that I had some force inside me, I turned my eyes to the other side of the room. A loud rustling was shifting weight behind some boxes out of my sight as a device used for transporting heavy objects, a dolly, came rolling out unmanned from behind its’ hiding place. It shot out on its’ two wheels and ran past me, right in front of me.

Then it struck me that I had no control of this phenomenon. It was not me. It was something or someone else. Knowing, but not waiting to second-guess my new hypothesis, I blurted out something from my past, “Stop it Zach!”

The dolly stopped immediately by dropping its’ front metal tongue hard onto the cement floor, scraping to a sudden stop.

“What?” screamed Derrik on the phone.

“Zach is doing this!” I hollered back. “I have to go.”

I hung up without looking at the phone.

“I Try” by Macy Gray just began while I was writing this section. It is one of the songs I thought was extremely fitting for the Zach DVD I created. I decided to keep it out and save it just for me. Is this song my real-life track lighting dropping to the floor? Maybe it was the showing just now of Memphis Belle, Zach’s most favorite movie. I just sat through the showing on HBO, knowing I was going to be writing this today. Or maybe it is the million other “coincidences” or reminders that I run into daily.

My main purpose for going to counseling was to allow me to begin healing emotionally and to “clean off my plate”. I wanted more room to start digesting the life events that are surrounding me daily. I had not felt the elation, the high of daddy-hood that I was consumed with when Emma was born. I had not been able to allow myself to feel that intoxicating pride and joy of being a father again with Ellie.

Since I started talking about it with my qualified stranger, I have been very successful at appreciating the living moment. I have begun to enjoy being and feeling alive again. I can sit still and play and observe the new experiences for both of my girls with a wide grin.

Ellie is on the verge of walking. I have been able to hold her tiny hand and help her. Emma wants to snuggle with me again. She lets me hold her hand the sweetest way a child can, making me feel invincible. I attribute these small things to my counselling.

With all this accomplished, I still fear death. I do because of the things that the reaper would steal away from me. The way he mugged and bludgeoned my brother. Because of this, I question faith, as I am certain most do when a loved one is snatched from them. Now, when I say faith, I am not talking about a defined religion. I am implying my relationship with God. My personal relationship with the higher being and the reasons and purposes that I am here today.

At the end of a horror film I watched last night there was a voice questioning the antagonist demon or devil spirit, “Where do YOU live?”

The devil answered, “In the weak and the wounded.” - So very true.

Right now, I am the weak until I can regain my faith, and I am wounded. Analyzing this dream I can start to heal and grow stronger. I think I can explain a few things and their meanings to me:
The room is the basement at my brother’s home.
The child’s hand underneath the black cloth was testing my faith. It is my connection still to my sibling and my future to my family in my afterlife.
The dolly, the hug, the lights are the present relationship and communication with Zach. It also is telling me to move on I think.

Derrik and someone else that I do not remember came over to the basement after my abrupt hang-up. I explained to them what had happened with the lights and the dolly and that I knew it was Zach.

They thought I was crazy.

I asked out loud, “Zach could you show them it is you?”

Immediately and simultaneously, all three of us were lifted from the floor about a foot or so. I was surrounded in an invisible blanket of warmth. I envisioned in the dream of how children feel the need to show their excitement when they see each other. When they hug each other off of the ground.

We all were hugged at once. They believed me then.

So was this “hugging” God? Was it the power of Love? Was it the power of Love through Zach with God?

At the time it was relief and excitement that Zach was near me spiritually again. He was truly with me for the first time in nearly a year. I never saw him. His body did not ever materialize. He was there only in spirit, and with such consuming strength. It was something no photograph can carry. It was more powerful than a memory of a real-life event. But that wasn’t the most amazing part of my subconscious organizing of my mental state. That came later in the dream.

I was alone again, speaking to him. I was telling him I wanted to see and touch him. There was never any verbal response from him. A black curtain or flowing cloth beckoned me to touch it. From the flapping folds came the impression of a child’s hand. I grasped through the thin sheet and held his hand. It was so small, so warm as if human, as if blood was pulsating through it.

Enlightenment and recognition came to me that he was no longer here physically.

Then, I awoke to the radio alarm clock.