Hologram Thoughts

Last night I had many dreams, but one woke me with tears…

My wife and I were driving on a country road. Beautiful cottonwood trees lined both sides of the two lane road, and like many Oklahoma roads, you could see from one stop sign to the next down the straight mile line. We were talking about many things from home and work, we were laughing, enjoying the quiet drive.

As she was driving I was looking toward her, smiling, and that is when I saw the light. A strange red-brown light was coloring downtown Oklahoma City between the trees as we cruised down the hot summer tarmac. For a moment I was in denial, and then I told her to stop.

She slowed the car and the we stopped between trees, looking down on the city skyline which must have been thirty miles away in my dream-mind. We both looked on for a moment as the mushroom cloud grew over the cityscape.

She looked at me, tears starting to flood her eyes, and I smiled at her, kissed her cheek and said softly, “Hey, how about those kids huh, aren’t they amazing?”

She smiled, kissed my own tears, and leaned into my chest as the world was washed away in another mushroom cloud.

I am still shaken.

This is a dream I had last night, as I recall it…

The scene looks like a university setting, on an open grassy area between many red brick buildings.  The buildings are camouflaged with ivy and ancient oaks, making them seem to fade in and out of existence in the leaf-sway on the breeze, only the lights from their myriad windows making them seem real.  A large group of people is gathered around a circle of benches on this cloudless moonlit night, they are listening to someone tell them about something, it all seems very important as I walk toward them.

I want between the benches and around those who sit on the grass, dodging flip-flops and beer cans and I move in to the center, on a mission.

“Are you ready?” the speaker asks me as I approach.

“One last thing I need still,” I say, pointing up at a building in the distance.

“Well,” he says turning to look across the lawn, “be quick about it then.”

I find myself standing now in a giant library.  Dusty books line dimly lit shelf after shelf.  I move over them, searching for a tome that I know must be here, but I cannot find it.  I grow frantic, pulling massive old books from the shelves and dropping them onto the floor in loud, dust exploding, bang and bang.  I open cover after cover, reading the first few sentences of each book seeking what I need, never quite finding the right story, until finally I understand.

I realize what I need to explain to the group below on the grass, and I race toward the stairs…but there I am stopped cold.  The stairs are too steep to climb down, and it is too far down below to jump safely.

Paralyzed with fear I stare out the windows at the group around the circle of benches, unable to reach them.

Last night I had a strange dream.  It was today, in today’s world, but I was visiting my grandparents in the home they lived in while I was a kid.  As I drove up the the house I saw something that paralyzed me with fear for a moment.  A truck had crashed into the house, specifically into the walls of my grandparents bedroom.

I jumped out of my car and ran to the truck.  I realized I knew the truck, it was my cousin Leon’s truck.  Him having been dead for a decade should have alerted me to the dream state, but no luck.

I ran up the steps and burst in to the living room.  My grandfather was sitting at the dining room table eating breakfast with his cousin Pete.  The fact that Pete is also dead should have woken me, but again, no luck.

“What happened?” I asked my grandfather.

“Grandma has breakfast ready,” my grandfather said between bites of crisp bacon.  The bacon was still hot, I could see bubbles of grease still on the bacon, and the smell was wonderful.  Now I could smell breakfast at their home again.  Bacon frying, biscuits almost ready to come out of the oven, coffee in the percolator.

I walked through the kitchen, looking for my grandmother, upset that Grandpa and Pete seemed oblivious to the truck sticking out of the house.  Walking down the short hallway to my grandparents bedroom I could hear my grandmother crying softly.

I turned the corner and found her sitting on the side of the bed, looking at her hands, and crying.

“Grandma,” I whispered. “Are you alright?”

She looked up at me, smiled, shook her head yes, and then looked at the wreckage that had been her bedroom.  The hood of the truck was at a strange angle as it rested on the bathroom sink and a nightstand.

“He didn’t mean to do it,” she said without looking up at me. “He just forgot and drove right in to the wall, honey.”

“Grandma, why isn’t Grandpa at the rest home? Why is he home, and why was he driving?”

“He didn’t mean to hurt anyone,” she said taking my face in to her hands as she cried.

I knelt down before her, and let my head rest on her lap.  I held her there as she sobbed quietly for a timeless moment.

“I love you Grandma.”