Last night I had one of those dreams that doesn’t leave when you wake up.
Not because it was scary.
Because it felt like I had actually been somewhere.
I was back at Tekamah-Herman Elementary.
Not as a kid this time, but as some kind of advisor or teacher or coach. I was walking the halls with old teachers, going room to room like I belonged there, like I had somehow returned to the place where everything first started.
After school let out, everyone headed for the buses.
And there was Mom.
Driving one of them.
Like it was the most normal thing in the world.
I got on her route, and we headed toward the old place.
Somewhere along the way, we came to Weatherly’s corner.
There was snow on the ground, but their house and buildings were gone.
Just… gone.
Like the place still existed in memory, but not in the world anymore.
Mom made the corner, but there was a drain pipe hidden under the snow and the rear wheel of the bus dropped into it.
The whole bus rolled over onto its side.
No panic.
No screaming.
I just remember saying, “Buses are bottom heavy.”
Like somehow I knew that mattered.
We got all the kids together, pushed, and rolled the bus back upright.
And then we kept going.
That part feels important now.
Even in the middle of chaos, some part of you still knows how to get things standing again.
Eventually we made it home.
The avocado house.
The one that still exists better in memory than it ever did in real life.
We got there and split up what chores needed done between Mom, Jason, and me.
Jesse wasn’t there. It was a couple years before he was even born.
My job was to clear snow from the driveway.
It was cold, so Mom took me downstairs to the pine closet—the one from the newer house where she kept her childhood Barbies and the little clothes she used to sew for them.
Only this time it was full of Dad’s old farm clothes.
She handed me his coveralls to wear.
And that’s when Dad showed up.
Not older.
Not tired.
Not at the end.
Young.
Jeans. Blue shirt. Orange tie.
He looked like his senior picture.
Almost like Ken had wandered into the wrong closet.
And somehow I was the only one who could see him.
That part stayed with me all morning.
Dreams never seem to bring people back the way we last saw them.
They bring them back the way memory wants to keep them.
The version closest to possibility.
The version before life got heavy.
After that, the dream got strange the way dreams do.
Time passed in weird jumps.
Little chores.
Menial things.
Then somehow I was at the granary, trying to keep wolves away from the hogs while clearing the driveway with the Bobcat.
Which honestly feels like adulthood in one sentence.
Protect what matters.
Keep things moving.
Try not to let the wolves in.
I hadn’t dreamed about Dad in almost two years.
And then all at once, there he was.
No big speech.
No dramatic goodbye.
Just standing there in the middle of ordinary things, like he had never really left.
Sometimes grief doesn’t come back as sadness.
Sometimes it shows up as old roads, Weatherly’s corner, an avocado-painted house, and your father standing quietly in the clothes you remember best.
Just enough to remind you that some places never really leave.
They just wait for you to find your way back.
If this resonated with you, you’re not alone.
