Does anybody really read these things? Perhaps my life is so dull anyone who might begin to engross oneself in something I've written would fall off into deep slumber. Like Rip VanWinkle.

A neighbor of mine, working on a school project, had to enter view people on their experiences with death. It brought back quite a few memories. The two that stand out are the deaths of my brother and my father.

When I was 20 I had a dream. In this dream it was dark and rainy and there was sorrow in the air. My mother couldn't stand on her own so I walked on one side of her and my brother the other. It was a short dream but in the morning I awoke with a sense that something tragic was about to take place and I would need to be strong. Two days later, in the wee hours of the morning before daybreak, there came a knock at the door. My grandfather had answered. It was the police come to tell us there had been an accident. My older brother was walking home from a bar (he always followed the tracks home) and had passed out on the trussel and been hit by a train. I knew this was the tragety my dream had foretold. It was as if I had swithched gears and became another person while deep inside I felt ill about it all. My mother was living in another state at the time but when she arrived she could hardly walk due to an injury sustained to muscles in her back. If not for the dream I don't know if I could have been as strong through it all as I was. The year after that we lost my grandfather to an annurism. I was with him when it happened. The ambulence came. Nothing could be done. He had known about it but didn't tell anyone. The year after that my grandmother passed.

Five years ago my father passed away of a heart attack in his home. I had called him to let him know I was on my way to pick him up for our Tuesday lunch and he didn't answer. I knew something was wrong because he looked forward to our visits. When I arrived at his door I didn't even knock. I slowly turned the key and opened the door when my worst fears came to be. He was face down in his chair. I had worked four years in a nursing home and had seen death up close before. I calmly went to the building secretary and told her what had happened. They were very upset. He made a lot of people very happy. Not only his cheerful personality and his music but he helped a lot of people overcome addictions. All the irritable early mornings I used to awaken to the sound of a piano as he would play notes as they came from his soul and write them down on paper are now very much missed. When I miss him all I have to do is play arecording of his music and he's there. I'll always remember the sound of his voice as he read A.A. Milne to me as a child and how I would have to move my legs twice as fast to keep up with his strides on our walks to the college campus and back.

The tree swing on campus. He would always push me in it.