My brother Bill is twelve years older than I am. That means that by the time I was entering kindergarten, he was out of high school and living on his own. I didn’t really get to know him very well until after I finished high school. After high school I went to a local junior college, broke up with my fiancé after a few months, dropped out of college, and went to live with my brother Bill at the tiny town of Elk on the coast in northern California. That marks the time when I first began to get to know him as a person instead of just someone that I saw at family gatherings.
Bill’s main profession was as a mechanic, specializing in repairing and rebuilding large Caterpillar tractors. He was also a low bed truck driver moving heavy equipment, small time cattle rancher, fire wood cutter, chief of the local volunteer fire department, doing just about anything that was rough, tough, dirty, hard work. He seemed to especially like big, old, heavy equipment. I was always in awe at his amazing skill as a mechanic, especially when working on the more complex items such as transmissions and other gear boxes. He seemed to understand machines like others understand our best friends. There are many, many stories of exploits with him. Going on any type of trip with him was bound to become an adventure, which I always found to be great fun.
He lived in an old, big, run-down Victorian style ranch house on the top of Sonoma Mountain, between the Valley of the Moon, and Santa Rosa. The old place is located on property that was inherited from his wife’s family ranch, in what is now some of the most expensive and sought after areas in the state. For most of his time living there, it was just beautiful land that was too small to make a living off of, but big enough to hold lots of old tractors, trucks, cars and other broken down vehicles and a few cattle. For years he ran his tractor repair business on that parcel, accumulating valuable pieces and parts of things that might be useful some day when the right job came along. In addition to the “good old stuff,” he accumulated scrap iron to be sold as needed in his retirement years – kind of a rusty nest egg.
I tried to visit him as often as I could, watching and talking to him while he worked on old equipment, sitting in their kitchen looking out of the window at the incredible view of the Sonoma Valley with its golden hills and oak trees. He was a very difficult person to talk to because his pace was hard to match. I might go to visit him with a question about my car. I would ask the question in the morning, and if all went well I might get an answer by evening – or maybe the next day. There was often a very long pause, and several projects, between comments. I found it to be a pleasant way to spend my time, but it could be frustrating if I actually needed the information in a hurry. One thing that he almost never talked about was himself. He would tell tractor and truck stories for hours at a time, and talk about all sorts of adventures that he or others had, but never did you find out much about Bill.
Unfortunately, when he was in his late fifties he had a massive stroke that left him almost dead, much of his body paralyzed, and in extremely poor health. His nest egg of scrap metal and spare parts immediately lost almost all of its worth because it depended upon his energy and knowledge to recoup the value. This was especially the case for the tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gaskets, seals, bearings, shafts, and odds and ends of parts that nobody but he could identify. They turned from high value parts to scrap in the blink of an eye.
I must confess that I did not visit him as often as I should have during the next years while he lay paralyzed, or finally slumped in a wheel chair. He could talk a little, but it was even slower and more agonizing than it had been when he was the picture of strength and good health. I stopped by now and then, but since we really couldn’t talk and I couldn’t think of what to do, I would leave too early. I know that I could have just hung around and done nothing, which would have been appreciated by him I am sure – but it was just too uncomfortable for me. It was such a sad thing to see this wasted man who had been so full of energy, life and strength just a short time before.
One day we got the call that he had died. I think he died in his sleep, but don’t know that for sure. At any rate, he died and I wasn’t there – which made me sad, a little guilty feeling. I should have supported him much more than I did. A few weeks following his death, his family had a remembrance celebration, inviting a lot of his old time friends to share good yarns and pleasant memories about my brother’s exploits over the years.
Several months after his wake I had my first lucid dream of him. I found myself sitting with him in the kitchen of his house, chatting and looking out on the hills and the Valley of the Moon. The house was just like it was in the old days when he first moved into the house with his young family. There was the big old wood burning cook stove, an old wooden dining room table, and we were sitting, as usual, in old spindle backed dining room chairs. Bill was in his early to middle thirties, in full health. He looked splendid, a very handsome, vigorous, strong outdoorsy man – just like I remembered him in those days.
It took me a little while to realize what had happened. At first I was comfortable, just sitting with my brother, enjoying each others company. Then it dawned on me that he was dead, and that I was in a dream. I looked very closely around the room and at him to see if there was anything that would give it away as being a dream, but found nothing – other than the fact that I was sitting talking to my dead brother. It was perfectly clear, stable, and looked exactly like real life.
I asked him what he was doing in my dream since he was dead. He said that he had a desire to talk to me, and that this was the way that he could do it. This seemed reasonable to me. I asked him what he was doing now that he was dead. He said that he was working on the place, fixing it up. He was repairing fences for his cattle, rebuilding the house, cleaning up the mess and generally doing all the things that he had wanted to do before he died. I asked him if he was lonely. He said that it wasn’t lonely at all, that he had his old friends and family around a lot. He said that he had friends and family that had died, and those that were still alive – so it was a pretty enjoyable time.
We chatted about his experiences of being dead, about his projects and about his family. Then he asked me to let his family know that he was doing okay, that they shouldn’t worry about him. We said goodbye to each other, and I woke up.
About a year later he was back. We were in his kitchen again. This time I immediately recognized where we were, and that I was in a dream with my brother. We made our normal small talk and then I asked him what he was doing now. He said that he was just about finished up with the projects. He told me that he was fixing things up to welcome our mother and his wife when they died. He planned on meeting them and welcoming them to the other side.
We talked some more about nothing much special. It was odd to be wasting time with small talk, but that seemed to be the thing to do. For example, I asked him about eating – what did he eat and did he have to eat. He said that he didn’t have to eat, it didn’t bother him one way or another, but that he did eat because he liked to. The food was just prepared and on the table, he didn’t have to fix it, so it was easy. He said that all of the normal things that we do when alive can be done, but don’t need to be done – it is a choice. For the time being, he was choosing to do them.
We finally ran out of things to talk about, said goodbye again, shook hands and I woke up. I had, and still have, the feeling that while these were dreams, they were really communications with my brother. I felt that it was a real, solid, actual person that I was talking to. Whether he was real or not doesn’t matter much to me, the dreams helped me to have a couple more visits with my brother, and to feel that he was doing well and enjoying himself. I was most impressed that he came back at the prime of his life, which was a nice touch.
After my mother died a couple of years later, I had one more dream of dead people – my mother. It was very brief. I had a short visit from her on the night of her death. She stopped by to let me know that she was gone, but that she was okay. She said that she was going to stay with Bill for a bit, and that they would then be gone. She visited my brother Michael at about the same time. He was driving his car at the time, several hundred miles away. She visited him to let him know that she had died and was on her way. No big trauma, just a goodbye visit for both of us.
I have not had any encounters with either of them since that time. I would kind of like to continue having these types of dreams about them, but it feels like they are no longer available for such nighttime chats.