An Inspirational Travel Experience

When I looked up the definition of "travel" I was shown the literal translation as in to go from point a to point b; or the term in basketball or to travel throughout. Yes, that is one meaning of travel; but, from the moment we are born until the moment we cease to exist we are travelling. Now, you realize I'm getting into the deep meaning of travelling as I see it. Of course we can travel around in a vehicle. I see our whole life as a journey. Point A is when we are born, point Z is when we die. Along the road of life are many other forks in the road. Those forks are called "choices."

There are wise choices and not-so-wise choices. I would like to think that most of my choices have been wise. I am an observer. I like to watch people and learn from their mistakes as well as my own. I am the middle child, but the first-born or even an only daughter. I am between two brothers. My oldest brother was always and forever getting himself into trouble. He tormented me a lot and called it joking around. I didn't think so. To this day I intensely dislike joking around or practical jokes. People who joke around think they are just being fun, I think it's another form of trying to be better or smarter than someone else.

Because my mom was busy trying to raise my dad there wasn't much time for her three children. There especially wasn't time to discipline my older brother and make him stop "joking around" with his two younger siblings. Because of the constant torment, I turned into an adult who practically hated my older brother with a passion. Don't get me wrong...as an adult I know that my parents were just doing the best they could, as do all of us. I was able to reason myself past the dislike of my brother.

It is because I felt my parents didn't do enough in the parenting department that I vowed my children would know they had parents. I learned from my parents life travels. I wanted to do better and I would like to think that I did, but one thing I hadn't taken into consideration was the fact that when my children grew up their choices could very well be the ones I didn't want them to make. What goes around comes around. Life choices. Travelling down the road of life.

I knew I had to change my way of thinking about my older brother. I had to make myself forgive his actions as the actions of the oldest child of an alcoholic father and a mother who was doing the best she could. When I could view his actions in that way, I was able to, in my own mind, decide his actions were forgivable. I still don't like his sense of humor and I definitely don't think the same way he does. I decided long ago that I couldn't let his actions bother me. I had to let him live his life the way he wants and not let it interfere with my life. In my mind I have separated myself from him. I feel it's the only way I can be with him and not be angry. It is how I have chosen to live my life with my brother.

My younger brother died on June 1, 1990 at 12:05 p.m. at Westpark Hospital in Cody, Wyoming. I was the last person to talk to him before he went into a coma. He had AIDS. My last conversation with him was about dying. He knew he was dying and told me so. I told him that he would get there before me and maybe he could come to me in a dream sometime and let me know what it's like. I know there are people who believe that when our loved ones who had passed on come to us in dreams, that means they're visiting us. I would love to believe that without being thought of as some kind of nut or kooky. Steve has been dead for over 19 years and I didn't have the dream from him until about six months ago. I guess we go by different clocks because it certainly took him long enough to show me. Oh, I had dreamt about him plenty of times, mostly stuff from when we were kids. This dream was different, way different. I woke up knowing it was from Steve.

In the dream I was winding yarn around and around a cord trying to make the cord stronger. Somewhere in the dream there were trainmen (men who work on trains, like engineers and conductors) and I knew those trainmen represented the road we travel everyday. The cord was a representation of our life and the yarn was a representation of strengthening our cord (life). In the dream I knew all this.

(You see, trainmen only travel from one town to their destination. Then they stay at the destination town and wait for a train back to their home town. Trainmen don't travel beyond 100 miles in all of their 30 years or so of working for the railroad.) Hence, they travel down the same road over and over. In the dream I was being shown what pure joy was like. I was being told that if we give our life to God we will have complete and utter joy. But, we have to go down that road like the trainmen who go down the same road day after day, year after year.

It is hard to describe what pure joy was. It was a very bright white. In the dream I was told that when someone lives their life away from God they will not find joy. In the dream there was a "trainman" who said he didn't want to live his life with God, he wanted to do whatever he wanted and it didn't matter who was hurt. At the moment the man told me that I woke up. That was a really intense dream and, believe me I was grateful that I woke up and found out it was a dream. But, I haven't forgotten the dream, all these months later I still remember it.

The only person I told about that dream was my mom. She said I had been given an incredible gift, I had been shown what it is like when we die and we are at peace with our lives. Not to get all metaphysical on you or anything.....I liked that explanation. Now I "know" what happens after we depart this world and enter the next.
It seems pretty wonderful. Go in peace, my children.