On a Lake

I often dream about Daniel. Sometimes it's a dream where I am simply telling someone about what happened with the full brunt of our grief flowing. Sometimes, it is my own psyche trying to make sense of a happening that still did not, and does not compute. Often though, Daniel appears and talks to me in dream trying to make sense of a world and a cosmos I apparently knew very little about. When he comes in dream, the download is very rapid and I cannot catch or recall much of what is said. I often know only that he has visited, that he cares, and that all is well and is proceeding according to God's plan.
Last night I had a dream that Stephanie and I were sitting in nice and comfortable Adirondack chairs at the side of a large lake. Daniel was with us and he decided to take a canoe or small boat out on the lake. Unlike real life, this seemed normal to me and we let him. He rowed out to the center of the huge lake where he was a speck and we could see him no more. Then, there was aircraft activity, Ospreys and other aircraft, one by one over the lake. We were worried that Daniel had been interfered with as the helicopters had stirred up the lake. In that moment we wished that we hadn't let him go or that we had given him a cell phone and could call and check on him. We also knew that it was Daniel, and even if he wasn't coming back to shore, that it was alright. We counterintuitively knew that all was well and that everything was fine. I take these to be messages. The feeling that came was "No matter what you saw, no matter what frightened you, the last time you saw me, all is well". I seem to need to hear this often, because it does not feel well to me.

As you may know, Daniel was a very gifted animator. On a code level, we would often alter cartoons and characters to do things and make motions he saw in other games or videos. I have included this Gummy Bear video because I think many of the things they did in it would have both amused
and intrigued him. Daniel did not bring this to my attention however, it was our newest son James who thought it was amusing.