October 14, 2016, just after midnight, my father left this earth after a long journey with lung cancer. I was the only family member with him when he passed. My mother, sister, and grandfather had been by earlier in the night but had gone home to get some rest. My father lived with me during his cancer treatment, and he passed away in my living room holding my hand while the hospice nurse sat on the sofa nearby. My older brother was on his way, but he didn’t make it in time to say goodbye. I had another brother that we were not able to get in touch with. He disappeared on us a few months before, running from the reality that we were about to lose my father.

After all of the phone calls were made, family members came back by the house, and funeral home came to pick up his body, I was left alone in my house, just me and my dogs, for the first time in years. My father had moved in with me a few years before when he and my mother divorced. I had not been alone in my house since he moved in with me. The silence was strange. The house felt lonely.

After a few hours of crying in the dark by myself and running a million thoughts through my head, I somehow fell asleep. I am sure it was pure exhaustion at that point. That night I had a vivid dream of a car accident. I could see the flashing lights, debris in the road, the lines on the road, everything except for who was in this accident.

I had this same dream every night. The same flashing lights, debris in the road, lines on the road. I never could make out who was in the accident. At the time I was driving to a weekend job about two hours from home every weekend. I had made up my mind that I was going to be in an accident. I had made up my mind that I would pass away in this accident. And I was at peace with it.

I never mentioned this dream to anyone in my family. I didn’t want them to worry. I knew that if I mentioned it, they would insist that I quit making the drive to my weekend job. I didn’t want to quit working that job, and if this was my destiny it was going to happen whether I made that drive or not.

On the night of November 18, 2016, I did not have the dream for the first time since my father had passed away just over a month earlier. I woke up the next morning well aware that the dream that I live with for over a month did not happen. I was uneasy about not having the dream. I knew that something had changed, but I didn’t know what.

Not long after I woke up, I received a phone call from my brother. He was crying on the phone and that isn’t like him. He managed to tell me that he got a call the night before from police in Texas. My brother that had disappeared just a few months before was in a horrible motorcycle accident the night before. He died immediately and his wife died at the hospital later in the evening.

It all suddenly made sense. The visions I was having about an accident weren’t for me. They were for my brother. For my sister-in-law. My father was trying to tell me something through those dreams, but I had misinterpreted it. The dreams suddenly stopped that night because the accident had occurred. My father was reunited with my brother. There was nothing else to warn me of. My father and brother were reunited that night and I no longer have the dreaded dreams of foreshadowing.