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.”
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