Julie Casey's Dream @ Brian the Night He Died

Hi hon --
My thoughts are with you as you head to Hurst now. I am very glad we got the chance to talk at lunch. I'm writing down my dream like you'd asked me to, while it's still somewhat fresh on my mind.

I had this dream last night sometime after 12:30, when I came to bed, and 2:45, when Lainey got up. I guess it was my mind's attempt to process everything you had told me about Brian last night. (Plus all the scenes of Slumdog Millionaire floating about in my brain from the watching it Monday!)

Anyway, the dream was like a movie about Brian's night, so sometimes I could see Brian walking around, and sometimes I was experiencing things from his point of view and seeing through his eyes. The dream began just outside a condo in downtown Fort Worth where Brian had been (blue is a color here and the word "Condo" on the screen of my dream movie). The condo was one of hundreds, completely inaccessible. I wondered how Brian had gotten in or out of the condo building, because it was so convoluted like a colony of mazes, without doors or stairs.

He had somehow figured out how to leave and started walking down the street in the middle of the night. He was tired and heavy and sleepy feeling, and he just wanted out and to get away. He wanted to go to the lake to be near the water (more blue color, like the dream was tinted blue). He kept walking, and he was noticing his shadow in front of him, how big it looked, from the moonlight. He kept stepping on it. He wasn't even noticing where he was going, and he was sort of disoriented. But he was determined to keep walking.

Then he noticed the silver black streak glinting across the concrete and realized it was a railroad track. He looked up and noticed he was near a rail yard (like in 'Slumdog' where the kids slept the night of the riot/violence). There were criss-crossing tracks and stopped railcars, and everything was still and quiet in the night. He saw that the tracks stretched to the left of him towards downtown, and then some to the right away from the city toward home. He looked down each one, seeing the rails go off in the distance. He knew that he didn't want to get on either of those tracks -- he just couldn't. So he crossed over both of them. He stepped over the tracks and kept walking on his shadow to where he thought the blue water was.

As he walked in the dark, the scenery looked jerky, (like in Slumdog when the kids were escaping). Sometimes he could perceive the imperceptible time breaks -- seeing in fast motion, then slow motion, and it was so hard to focus in the night, and so confusing -- lots of clutter all around, and he wasn't sure what was real stuff and what was shadow or imagined. He was feeling lost and tired after the rail yard, walking with his shadow that would never leave him.

Then it occurred to him to look up at the bright moon to get his bearings. At first the moon was all blurry, so he stopped walking and just stared up at it. And then the moon came into focus, the vision becoming completely clear and still. No more jerky motion. No more clutter or shadows. No more fast or slow motion. Just the bright white moon in the clear black sky, alone and still. He was relieved that he didn't have to look at his own shadow or try to figure out what was real or not. All he had to do was look at the beautiful moon shining down on him.

Then there was a rushing, buzzing sound from the city, and he hated it, because it was trying to distract him. But he didn't give into the noise, because he'd decided to look at the moon no matter what.

So he kept staring at the moon, feeling more and more peaceful and safe. He could see clearly, the bright circle outlined against the black sky, and he was glad for the simplicity of the vision after all that confusion. He felt the night breeze and breathed in deeply, coming to the conclusion that if he could just keep staring at the moon, that the moonlight would fill him up with all that clarity and peace and stillness.

I woke up then -- with the cell phone buzzing on the nightstand by the bed, which was the buzzing sound in the dream. The dream left me with such an overwhelming feeling of peace surrounding Brian that I really felt that he was going to be OK.

I'm so sorry, hon. I love you.

Jul