A little under a year ago, I lost a very good friend, Vince, to cancer. His fight was short and, thankfully, his suffering was confined to only a few weeks, despite a long battle that included chemotherapy and other treatment in Philadelphia.
For some reason on my way to work a few days ago, I thought of Vince. It was an immediate thought. It was like he was in the car screaming at me to wake up and pay attention to ‘signs’ .. I cannot explain it.
But I immediately recalled that I messages Vince only a few days before his death while he was in ICU, and he messaged me back a whimsical joke response. I screenshotted the message and emailed it to myself.
After thinking of Vince on my way to work, I searched the archives of my email frantically attempting to find the screen shot of Vince’s message to me. I found something I entirely forgot I had.
You see, for some time now, when I wake up in the middle of the night or in the morning, and remember my dream, I try to quickly type it out and email it to myself. I didn’t do this in a while, but when searching for the Vince screen shot I found an email I send myself at 3am (always 3am) in the summer of 2014, a few months prior to Vince’s death. The email was filled with spelling mistakes and grammar errors since I was most likely groggy at 3am sending it–most of the time I quite honestly don’t even remember sending myself the dreams since I am in a state of drowsiness.
When I read the dream from 2014, it was a bit alarming. Especially considering that a few months later Vince was deceased.
My exact words, with names besides Vince’s redacted, grammar mistakes included:
Had a dream with a series of different events, but the one that’s not the most was that I went to Vinces house to see the flood damage that occurred from the water is home. [name redacted] showed up to,Vince is looking very upset I asked him if you lost personal things and he said yes, obviously losing all of the music that was on VHS in his basement. [
name redacted] several of coarse you backed it up and then started laughing nervously because he did not.
At this point a bird flew into Vince’s house and he said how he used to take potshots at them when he was a kid. I said how there’s a wives tale but it means someone is going to die.
He was dead only four months after this.
Incidentally, I have yet to find the screen shot of Vince’s last message to me that I know I emailed myself after his death.