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07:03:2004 Entry: "Ann : DREAM: Names changed to protect the dead."

DREAM: Names changed to protect the dead.

Stan and I were driving around in an old 70s car like some of the ones we used to have. I think we were with a couple other people, but I don't know who they were. I think we were in Milwaukee. Or maybe Racine. Someone suggests that we stop in on someone ('Chuck') that I used to know in a very indirect way (our moms were friends...he was several years older than me...and he died probably almost 20 years ago at the age of 29 from a heart attack.) I really don't want to stop in on this person as I barely knew him and I felt we would be intruding. I suggest we call him first to see if he's home and wants to see us. We start driving toward his neighborhood, which initially looks like an area in Madison near the employment service, (Ruskin Ave). But as we drive down Ruskin, it takes on a more rural look and it somehow looks familiar to me. The houses are very cheap and shoddy and painted white (I have reocurring nightmares of small, frame white houses). We go into one and there's a bunch of people there, in a hallway, with a bunch of doors. All the doors are flimsy (made out of plywood) and painted white. I realize these aren't just rooms, these are apartments inside this little house. Everyone living there lived in a small room. I'm rather mad that no one called Chuck ahead of time to see if he wanted to see us. Stan goes into one of the rooms--it's a bathroom and he uses it. I'm waiting outside the door for him and a woman who is shorter than me (around 60, short curly hair) comes up and tries to get in the door but Stan has it latched. I told the woman that someone was using it. She said that lots of people use it. I realize that is THE bathroom for the entire place; no one has a private bath in their apartment. I guess somebody we were with also knew Chuck and they start talking. Chuck invites us into his tiny apartment where he and his girlfriend/wife live (he was married when he died). They have aquariums full of spiders. I remember seeing an ironing board and it sort of separated the rest of the room from where they had the spiders. Chuck had a tall, scraggly friend there with him too and this doofus hick was laughing at us to Chuck not thinking we would see him. I did not want to be there, but fortunately I think I woke up.

I find this dream disturbing because I dreamt about a dead person I hardly knew and never think of. Chuck's whole family--his mom, 'Julie,' especially--was simply tragic. I remember my mom telling me tales of when they played with a Ouija board when they were girls, and Julie asked it who she would marry. The Ouija board went Ha Ha Ha Ha. This could be taken that her marriage would be a joke, which it was as she got divorced, or that she would marry a Hank. (I don't think Hank stuttered, though). Julie and Hank divorced when Chuck was young, (Hank was a worthless drunk) so I guess Chuck was probably the first person I knew that was being raised by a single parent. I remember Julie having cat-eye glasses with a beehive hairdo. She looked like a caricature of people like that from the 60s. The only real memory I had of Chuck was when I was a little kid and he was a little older. I was at my grandmother's house in Racine and my mom had invited some of her friends over. Julie and Chuck were sitting on a couch and Chuck kept eating cookies. Julie kept asking Chuck 'how many of those did you take?' and Chuck said 'only two' each time. Not much parental control there. I think Chuck became quite a fat kid. The only other time I remember Chuck was when we were both teens and he drove me, my Mom and Julie to one of our mom's friends house for a gettogether (boy, did I feel out of place....all these ladies in their 40s...and you know, I'd still feel out of place if I was my age now back then). I think Julie raised Chuck at her parent's house, but eventually her parents had to go to a nursing home. My mom told me that before Chuck got his driver's license, they would ride their bicycles over to the nursing home to visit them because she couldn't afford taxi fare (like my mom, Julie didn't drive either). After her dad died, he willed the house to her with the stipulation that Hank couldn't set foot in the house. Chuck married rather young, fairly shortly after high school as I recall. He obviously invited Hank, his father, to the wedding, and the only place Hank could stay after the wedding or reception or whatever he came for was at his ex-wife, Julie's house. He slept on the couch that night, and when everyone woke up in the morning, Hank was dead. How odd is that? Dying for your son's wedding...at you ex's house? But it gets stranger. Years later, Chuck is helping Julie clean up her house (yes, the house Hank died in a few years before, that she inherited from her dad). It's a hot day and he's up in the attic cleaning it out. Chuck suffers a heart attack from the heat and dies. I'd say the house was cursed, or maybe Julie's dad put a curse on it because she allowed Hank back inside. Several years ago, Julie died. My mom didn't hear about it until months after when another friend told her.

By Ann @ 11:02 AM CST:07:03:04 ..::Link::..