What Dreams May Come

Words could never tell the joy an uncle brings.

An uncle is a bond of faith that even time can’t sever, a gift to last all of our lives. An uncle is forever.

~Irene Banks

Uncle Gary was one of my favorite people. He had a cowboy mentality and was a hard worker. He could fix anything and always had grease- or motor-oil-stained fingertips. He had a quiet strength about him.

He was like a second father to me, and to my husband he was like the father he always dreamed of.

My husband, Daniel, and I had a roller-coaster marriage. It was bumpy. Our hardest year was our fifteenth. We stopped talking. We fought constantly, and I was ready to call it quits. I had completely checked out of my marriage. My husband had, too. We knew that if we didn’t fix what was broken, divorce was the next step.

Uncle Gary also passed away that year.

One night, I had a dream that Daniel and I were at Uncle Gary’s house. The sounds and smells were so real that I felt like it wasn’t a dream at all. My uncle said, “You two come outside with me and let me show you what I’ve been working on.”

We followed Uncle Gary to his shop table where there were parts to something scattered all around. He picked up a few pieces and tried to puzzle them together. He handed a piece to Daniel and then a piece to me.

He looked straight at us and said, “If you don’t have the right tool, you can’t fix it. It can’t be fixed without the right tools.” He kept saying this to us until we assured him that we would find the right tool.

I had this dream four nights in a row — exactly the same dream every night.

Since my husband and I were barely talking to each other, I didn’t tell him about the dream. On the fifth night, Daniel mentioned that he was really missing Uncle Gary. Having a wall up, I shrugged and said simply, “Me, too.” After a few moments of silence, Daniel began to tell me about a dream he had about Uncle Gary every night for the previous four nights. Every detail, every word was the exact dream I had.

We both broke down and sobbed uncontrollably. Then, we did something we hadn’t in years: We talked all night. We fixed what was broken, and the right tool was communication. My uncle knew we wanted to fix it. We just needed a little bit of help.

— Lindsay Brown —