Family Matters

My dream the other night involved my brother.

First, some background: my brother and I may eventually become close, but we currently have not quite established an adult, regular interaction. I haven’t seen him for about 7 years, and haven’t spoken to him on the phone for about 4 years. We have exchanged an email a year or two. We’ll be fixing this, I’m sure, in the next few years, but it takes time. In real life, he is a chef in Pittsburgh. As the younger sibling, I adored him growing up, and tried to be as ‘cool’ as he was.

In my dream, I meet him and am surprised to learn that he is a soldier in Iraq. He takes me to a battlefield, where bombs are exploding and gunfire is everywhere. He continues talking in a normal voice, essentially ignoring the chaos everywhere. I try to match his nonchalance. We then stop inside a car to chat. The car is filled with blood splatters, dried, on all surfaces. I start to become claustrophobic, and nearly throw up from the obvious suffering that must have occurred in the car. But I fight to maintain my appearance of nonchalance, for fear of disappointing my brother.