The Recurring Dream Changed One Detail And That Is How I Knew It Was Coming

I do not think dreams predict things. I want that on the record before I say the rest, because I need you to understand that I have spent a decade arguing with myself and losing.

The dream, for eleven years: I am standing at the end of our lane. A man walks up it toward me, carrying a bucket. The bucket is empty. He nods. He walks past. I wake up.

That is all. No fear. No message. Boring, honestly.

In March, I had it, and the bucket was full.

I could not see what it was full of. It was heavy. His arm was straight and his shoulder was down and he was walking the way you walk when you are carrying something you do not want to spill.

He did not nod.

I woke up and I sat on the edge of the bed at 04:00 and I felt like I had swallowed something cold.

I rang my brother that morning, which I do not do, because we are close in the way that men are close, which is to say we speak four times a year and would each take a bullet for the other.

He was fine. He laughed at me. He said, "You had a dream about a bucket?"

Nine days later he came off his bike on a wet road and broke his back in two places.

He is walking. He is, after two years and a great deal of pain, walking, and he is stubborn and he will be fine.

But he did not walk for eleven months.

Here is the thing that I have never told him and that I am telling you.

I have had the dream twice since. Both times the man carried the empty bucket and nodded, and I woke up and I was so relieved I could have wept.

If it ever changes again, I do not know what I am supposed to do. I cannot ring everybody I love and tell them to be careful because a man I have never met is carrying a bucket up a lane that does not exist.

I would do it, though. I would ring every single one of them.