by Sharon Saunders

Created on: May 01, 2008   Last Updated: November 04, 2009

In July of 2004, my Uncle Billy died very suddenly, from a blood clot, while driving to buy a new pair of shoes. His car rolled into a parking lot, where attempts to save his life were unsuccessful. My Aunt Margaret (my mother's sister), and my Uncle Billy were like my other parents, and it was impossible to imagine my family without Billy. Most of my good memories as a child include my aunt, uncle, and their boys.

Billy liked to help people. If you needed something done, or needed to borrow something, you didn't have to ask him, he usually offered before you could ask. He was just a good guy, and his generous nature would survive his death.

A little over two months after Billy died, I sat up in the bed one morning around five o'clock, wide awake, and told my husband that my uncle had come to me in a dream. It wasn't a big surprise; that night, before I went to bed, my Chihuahua, Halle, had growled for ten minutes at a couch where no one was sitting. Although I tried, she could not be distracted from whatever it was that she saw on that couch. This was something she had never done before, and she has done one time since, but that's another story.

In the dream, or visit, which is a better way to describe it, I saw myself in my aunt and uncle's house, looking in the refrigerator for something to drink, when I heard my uncle say, "Sharon, do you want me to make some tea?"

I was startled by his voice; turning, I walked into the living room, where he sat in his chair, luminous, which sounds cliche', I know, but there's no other way to describe it - he was luminous. He didn't look like a young man, but younger than when he died, and healthier. Apparently, he no longer needed his glasses, because he wasn't wearing them.

"I know you have wanted to see me.", he said.

A lump began to grow in my throat, and my stomach tightened; I sat down beside him, and somehow managed to to say, "You look so good. How are you?"

My uncle began to speak to me, but his words sounded as if they were being spoken into a fan, (yeah, I know, another cliche', but true), and the only thing that I understood was the word "lungs." Across the room I could see my aunt, and one of her boys, sitting on the couch, reading a newspaper. They acted completely oblivious to our presence. I tried to speak to them, to let them know Billy was there, but they never looked up.

Suddenly, I was shown a different scene - it was my father. He was standing in what looked like a break room, like you would have

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