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It's not often that I dream of a deceased friend or family member. Not only was my subject departed, but this was the first time I dreamt of anyone coming back to life and not realizing he'd been gone. The following account comes from a dream not of actions or words, but of a lost friend, and possibly the need to answer a "what if" question. This dream was short - only a few seconds long - but quite vivid.

In my dream, Dave had somehow been resurrected. I didn't know how or why, but I knew it had been very recently. Sometimes in dreams you just naturally "know" certain facts, and in this case, I "knew" that it was definitely July of 2008. I was not traveling back to a time when Dave was still alive. This was also not just a vivid memory. In my dream, there was no doubt in my mind that he had died years ago, but yet here he was.

I pondered this miracle as we both sat in a tent, preparing for our impending Independence Day performance. He was oiling the valves of his tuba with that sweet smelling stuff he always used, as I did the same with my trumpet. He was making jokes as if nothing had ever happened - still a spry 54 years old and seemingly unaware of his newfound life status.

It had been five years to the day. I was still in shock, all of us were. It was as if God or fate or some unknown deity was trying to tell us that July 3rd was some sort of magical date. We lost Dave on that very day in 2003, after his heart finally succumbed to the ravages of 20-something years with juvenile diabetes.

For someone his age to contract such a disease was extremely rare, but he did, and yet he never let it keep him from living life. He was quite a talented musician, an avid traveler and boater, a loving husband and son, and from what I've been told, an excellent dentist.

Dave's most memorable trait, however, was his disarming personality. When I first met him, I had to deal with his sardonic wit, but the blow was softened by our mutual love for music and his aptitude for smoothing anyone's ruffled feathers. He'd had dozens of close friends because of this innate ability. Indeed, the only clue that anything was wrong was the frequent coughing spells. Near the end, he needed an insulin pump machine at night, and once he got that, we all knew it wasn't long.

Now here we were again, warming up to perform with our brass quintet. How did this whole situation happen? My mind was completely blown, yet I was also somehow calmed by his return, and ready to continue were the

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