A Visit in the Night

Face what you think you believe and you will be surprised.

~William Hale White

I had recently moved to a new home with my two children, in hopes of giving them a better life. The area that we moved from seemed to be going downhill fast, with increasing violence in the community and bullying in the hallways of the school.

However, at our new home, things quickly got much worse. I was hit from every direction. The job that I was supposed to have fell through the second day I was there. My relationship with my boyfriend Jack started to fall apart. Soon, his best friend, Paul, began telling me bad things about him. I was crushed. I tried to hide that I was sad because I did not want to upset my kids. Since I had moved so far away, I did not have any friends or family around to lean on for advice or support.

I struggled to get back into the workforce, causing my finances to get tighter and more difficult every day — another fact I tried to hide from my kids. But I noticed that they were lonely, too, for their old friends. So, I tried to fill their days with as much fun as possible. Not knowing our way around town made this difficult, so Paul often helped. He was a good person, or so I thought. I did not connect the fact that often the things I argued about with Jack stemmed from conversations that I only had with Paul.

I started to yearn for the wise counsel of Captain Robinson, my pastor from when I was a child and attended church. At one point, he was more than just my pastor. I lived a violent life of turmoil with my abusive father and stepmother, and he was the only one who comforted me and gave me strength on really bad days. Captain Robinson was the man I needed now. But how could I find him? I hadn’t seen him in twenty years.

I called my former church, hoping that someone there could help me find him. Maybe the new pastor was still in touch with him. I called the church almost every day for over a week, but no one called me back.

One night, I broke down. I lay in bed and cried myself to sleep. I quickly found myself in a dream.

I was sitting on a couch in a light-blue room by myself. There was nothing on the walls, just me in this room. I cradled my face in my hands and was crying. Suddenly, Captain Robinson was in front of me. He was the way I remembered him as a child. It was as if he had not aged a day.

He pulled my hands away from my face and said, “I’m here. I’m here. Shh, I’m here.” Then he sat next to me with his arm around my shoulder and said, “Shh, it’s okay. I’m here. Tell me everything that’s wrong.” I spilled out every aching thought inside me, sharing everything that was happening. He just nodded his head and let me vent.

It seemed like he already knew what was happening, but talking about it helped me feel better. It felt like he was scooping out the jagged pieces of my life that were tearing me apart inside while giving me that listening ear I needed so badly. At the end, I was just a shell — a hurt shell — but all the bad stuff was gone from inside me.

He told me that I needed to go back home — that where I was now would never be home for me and my kids. I needed to let go of Jack and Paul. What Jack and I had was not love, and Paul was not a friend and never was.

He explained I was being told many lies. It would take too long to sort out the lies from the truth, and trying to do so would only make things worse. He told me again to take my kids and go home — rebuild our lives from there. We would be happy again once we made that move.

Then he said he had to go and could not come back again. He told me not to try to find him anymore. He needed to make sure that I would be okay and stressed that he was only allowed to come and see me this one time. His last words still play over and over in my mind. He said, “Don’t try to find me anymore. You won’t be able to find me. I died of a heart attack over a year ago, but I’m still here listening.”

That was in October. The next month, I moved with my children back home — to the town they had lived in when they were born. Finally, we had everyone back in our lives that we needed so much.

In December, I learned that my childhood church — the one where Captain Robinson preached — was having a toy drive for Christmas. It was late notice when I found out about it, but I bought two toys and went to the church to deliver them and volunteer my gift-wrapping skills. I debated about whether I should do this, but I still wanted to see the new pastor and make one last attempt to find Captain Robinson, even though he had been insistent in my dream that I not do that. But then again, it was just a dream, right?

At the church, I had a long talk with a woman who was wrapping gifts alongside me. She also knew Captain Robinson. She said that, at one point, her daughter was married to the Captain’s son. And then I heard these words from her own mouth: Captain Robinson died almost two years ago — from a heart attack!

There they were, his own words, echoing back through her. “Don’t try to find me. I died over a year ago.” It was true, and it was him in my dream! He was there, next to me, to comfort me and carry me through to the next stage of my life. Sometimes, I still talk to him. Although I know I will never see him again, no one can take away the fact that he rescued me on one horrible night — in one glorious dream!

— Charlotte Hopkins —