I recently started dreaming about Brandon. My daughter told me that when you dream about dead people, that means they are reaching out to contact you, or something like that. But I think it just means that I am coming to terms with the fact that he is dead. I had a very good friend of mine die when I was 20, and the same thing started happening after a while. Anyway, most of the dreams I have about Brandon are not good. He is almost always in trouble---things are slipping. But what disturbed me about the dream I had last night is that there were lots of indications that he had been trying different things to fix his situation. When someone dies because of addiction or suicide, survivors are left with a lot of regret, and most of the time, we use that regret to increase our pain. I do it to myself with Brandon, some, not a lot. The one that actually hangs me up is when I think about how he could have helped himself.
I woke up sad this morning because in the dream I just had, Brandon was slipping, but he had already moved to another place, trying something different. In the dream, another complication in his life popped up, and he immediately got on the phone and found a solution. It made me proud of him that he could solve problems for himself. I wish that would have been true in his real life.
His old Jeep was in the dream too. We were driving around in it and something broke. I immediately started thinking of ways to fix it. As soon as I woke up, I started thinking about how I fix the Jeep because I can't fix the fact that Brandon is dead. I can't go back in time and fix his situation---I don't want to anyway because what I really wish is that he knew how to do that stuff. I have felt for a long time that a ton of Brandon's problems came down to the fact that he counted on others to fix his problems and never learned how to do it himself.
When it comes to that Jeep, I think I like to work on it to remind myself that I can fix things when they go bad. I don't have to get sad and feel like giving up, giving in. I can try something that might make it better. I can't fix the fact that my brother is dead, but I can keep reminding myself that when things go bad, I can try to make it better. I wish Brandon would have known that he could have done the same.
Join my feed to stay up to date: