Several weeks ago, I was driving to Dream Group when my mom called.
I don’t like answering phone calls or texts when I’m driving, so I snuck a glance just long enough to see who was calling me, then let it go to voicemail.
Mom never calls. She occasionally texts out of the blue, but she never calls. The last time she called, my dad was in the hospital.
It’s okay, I told myself. Let’s get to group, then we’ll see what’s going on.
My uncle was gone. Heart attack. So while my dad was fine, and I got to breathe a huge sigh of relief, I knew my cousins were going through the very thing that I had just been afraid of. I’ll never know how to express how surreal that feeling was.
I never knew my uncle. My parents had been the couple who moved away, plus my mom and her brother had never gotten along well. When I was in high school, I remember my mom talking to him over the phone in tears, trying to resolve the difficulties that had set them apart when they were kids. From the sound of it, he had been a bit of a bully when they were young, though also from the sound of it, he later found better ways to channel that energy.
I knew after I received that text that I would be going out there. All of us cousins had sort of awkwardly reconnected after college, bridging the gap that our parents never bridged for us, and I wasn’t going to leave them hanging so long as I could help it. It was also very hard for my grandma, and my mom.
The poverty spirit is pervasive. There was a part of me that said, “This is going to be an expensive trip, it’s going to be a huge hassle, you may just need to opt out.” Fortunately, that voice no longer has he sway in my life that it used to: “No. I’m going out there.”
That night, I had a dream.
I was in this large industrial kitchen/work shop/chemistry lab on the second floor of an old school. The room felt very much like it came from the 50s. Two of my friends were there, and they featured prominently in the dream, but I don’t remember how. Their names are very biblical and very meaningful, but I won’t share them here.
The classroom instructor was very gruff, but he left the class for a short period to bring back some materials he wanted to show us. While he was gone, a huge and powerful wind picked up and blew in through the windows and knocked things over. The younger kids were stunned and didn’t know what to do. I closed the windows, but opened one a little to let air in because of all the cooking. The knocking over of things had started a few fires near the door, and I put them out with the teal handkerchief that I own in real life and always take hiking. They were creepy flames, like I’ve seen in a few nightmares, but they were very small and they went out easily.
Something shifted and the gruff teacher returned to the classroom carrying a long black case, the sort that are often used for musical and stage equipment. He told us all a sort of aphorism, something that sounded very wise. He was really passionate about the things he wanted to show us. But then I woke up. I didn’t get a chance to see what was in the case.
It wasn’t long after I woke up that I started crying. All I could think of was my uncle and his passing. Sometimes God gives us these dreams and points us directly to their meaning. It takes experience to really understand what you’re dealing with, and it’s especially good to get help from experienced interpreters, but this time I knew. Through my tears, I said, “Goddammit, why did you have to be so stubborn?” And the response that came back, deep in my heart, was this: “I’m sorry…. Go do the things in life you want to do.”
As I’ve mentioned, I never knew my uncle. You could say I didn’t know the real him, what he really looked like. And I’ve never trusted my mom’s stories exclusively. He was, I think, a tough man, but tough in ways I never knew. I would later hear a story about how he had been a part of two jobs at the same time (small town life), and as a supervisor, told his new supervisees, “I want to hear all of your complaints, because I’m going to take them up higher and make sure they get fixed. And if nobody wants to hear those complains from me, I have this other job over there and it’s not a problem to me if I lose this one.” And he got things done! That’s pretty badass. He was also a Bible Study teacher at his church. I suspect that he had a lot to teach, but just as in the dream, I never quite got a chance to learn what was in that box.
My flight that Sunday was delayed due to high winds. And for the first time in my life, I bought the tickets, booked the hotel, and scheduled the rental car in one go, and by the evening I was deep in the land of corn (I ended up staying at my grandma’s, but booking the hotel was to avoid putting any pressure on her). After the trip, I would reflect on how I should do that more often, to start my own exploration of the world.
The next day came. I remember as a kid how long funerals took. But as an adult, it seemed far too short. He looked so much like my grandfather. My grandmother touched his hands in final farewell. My mom told me through tears, “I didn’t know him well, but he was still my brother.” There was the service, then the drive to the cemetery. I was touched by the respect of random passers-by, who, even going in the opposite direction, pulled over and put their hazard lights on for the processional.
It was windy at the cemetery, and slightly rainy. We were there, that cemetery I know, and then we were gone. Several hours later, I was once again driving through the corn fields, through the country, through this strange and lonely land where my ancestors lived and learned and passed on. I thought about those fields, and the lives lived within them. That while interested in history, there’s so much of my own history I don’t know. There is, I think, a powerful invitation there, just as there was after my dream.
Hands in the dark. We’re all looking for family, place, and belonging. Stretch out, stretch wide. We’re not finished here, yet.