Song: "Gone Too Soon" - Simple Plan

This part was enjoyable to write. I will tell you a few of the dreams I've had about Matthew. In the few months after his death, I had a dream about him every two weeks. The funny thing is, I still remember most of them. Are you ready for some storytelling?

Dream 1:

The first dream happened in Fall 2021, a month after Matt died. It was the simplest of them all. What I remember is that there was a festival occurring. Matt came to me and hugged me. We went to the festival together, shared some cotton candy and hot dogs, and then he gave me a different take on the accident. Matt waited until after we were in his car before doing so. He said that he fell asleep for a few hours, and when he woke up, he felt like a brand-new man. He told me not to worry and that he was doing just fine.

Mom, Dad, my younger brother, and grandma were also in the dream. Matt and I met up with them, and Matt said hi.

Only three words left Mom's lips. They were the opposite of the words she spoke when we found out. What was originally "Matthew, he died" was now "Matthew, he's alive."

Dream 2:

This dream was a little more complex, for it was a time-traveling story (one of my favorite sub-genres of the Sci-Fi genre). Mom and I stumbled upon a time travel port—like a shipping port—that took us back to the early 2010s. We landed in a miraculous, green forest. Soon after, Mom and I saw Matt and a few of his friends hiking. He loved anything that had to do with the outdoors. He and his friends laughed and joked with one another.

Mom tried to speak to him, but I stopped her and said, "Mom, you can't. It will change the past. That's not how time travel works."

Mom was disappointed, but she understood. She and I followed Matt through the forest, out of sight, and watched him. However, before we knew it, it was time to return home.

Mom looked the woman running the trips in the eyes and asked, "Can we bring Matthew?"

"No, you can not," the woman replied in a dainty, sad voice.

And that, my friends, was where the dream ended. I almost feel like this trip through time was secretly a trip to the Afterlife.

Dream 3:

Dream three was a bonding dream. Matthew was supposed to move in with me for the Fall 2021 semester, but he never did. He did in this dream, though. He visited me in the house like he was supposed to.

The two of us sat on the master bedroom bed with smiles.

Curious, I pulled my knees close to my chest and asked, "So, what's your new life like, Matt?"

"I'm still getting used to it," he replied in that familiar, soft-toned voice. "I haven't tried to fly through any walls yet (this is so something Matthew would say)."

I scooted closer to him until we were an arm's length apart. "How do you travel from realm to realm?"

"There's a portal," he explained. "It connects our world to the Afterlife. The Afterlife is beautiful, Vika. Nature is everywhere, and there are even buildings like this world. I met somebody—a girl who died in a car crash. We're friends now."

"Oh, that's wonderful." Matt's words got me thinking about the Afterlife.

We exchanged stories and then went to bed. Matt lay down next to me and slept with me.

I told Mom and Dad about this dream. They think that was one night when I slept very well. Considering the dream was about bonding, I'm not surprised it's one of my favorites.

Dream 4:

The tone of the fourth dream was very different from the last three. It was the most dramatized and sad. Matt visited the whole family at our home in my hometown. He, my younger brother, and I ventured to a well-known lake in the Deep South. We swam and played like kids. Matt dove a perfect dive off a dock into the cool, clear water. He was happy to be with my younger brother and me.

We three kids returned home, still in a good mood, but Mom, still trying to process the situation, said something that changed the atmosphere.

In our home's crowded kitchen, she approached Matt, took his shoulder, and asked, "Are you a ghost?"

With those three words, Matthew burst out sobbing, sobbing that sounded like it belonged to a child. His stress accelerated to a whole new level. He did not answer Mom's question but came to me and cried on my shoulder. It was like he was still trying to come to terms with everything, too. From there, he replayed the accident.

That night, Matt was so overwhelmed with stress that he grabbed my anxiety pills off the kitchen's stone countertop. He took one too many and accidentally hurt himself for the second time. He stumbled into Mom and Dad's room, where I was sleeping, and said two words that gave us a sense of what he felt at the time of death: "It hurts." And that was it. He died for a second time.

The dream ended with EMS coming to the house. The paramedics put Matt's body on top of another (I'm assuming his first body) and drove off. He was brave to share what it was like when the accident happened. Matthew felt safe around me, so he came to me often.

Dream 5:

In the early months of 2022, around the six-month anniversary, I had another time-traveling story about Matt. It involved not just him but also other members of the family who had died in the past ten or so years: two grandpas, an aunt, a great-aunt, and my grandma.

I'm not sure how the time traveling worked in this dream, but regardless, I ventured back to 2015 and met up with my family in one of our go-to houses on a childhood island. Matthew had just returned from an offshore job (he worked offshore most of his life).

He was a little tired, but he was excited to see us. He sat down with the family and said, "Hi, guys."

"Hey, Matt," said Dad. "How was Florida?"

"Hot." Matt squeezed sweat out of his black hair and shirt. "But I still had a good time." His dark eyes rolled over to me. His smile vanished when he noticed my ghastly expression. "Vika? What's wrong?"

I took a deep breath and placed my hands in my lap. "Matt, I'm Vika from the future, and I need to tell you something. You're going to die in 2021 from an accident." It was hard to say, but something told me he needed to know. I think he knew this, too.

Matthew did not freak out. Instead, he sat silent for a few minutes and pondered his thoughts. He recalled everything that had happened to him in the past. "If that's the case," he finally said, his voice not shaking, "then I will do better for me and the family."

His calmness amazed me. He expected something terrible would eventually happen if he kept up his risky behavior. What a wonderful dream that showed his grit determination to help the family and himself.