My wife wasn’t home. She hadn’t been for several hours but I swear I heard her call me into the house. When she did arrive home I told her what had happened and she and I agreed that I must have been hearing things. I have been known to do that often. I am not sure some of the things I hear can be explained,but I know I have voices in my head so I pass it off as that. Sometimes those voices help me get through things,sometimes they get me into trouble. Most times they just irritate me.
I couldn’t get my Uncle Johnny’s flag out of my mind that night. As I said,when I went into the basement it drew my attention so intensely,as though I was supposed to see it and think about him. Can’t really explain that to anyone,that feeling,but it was there regardless.
That same night about 2 AM I was reading and I heard a sound coming from the basement. It was a quick banging sound. I was startled,I went down into the basement to see what it was.
It turns out that when I had looked at Uncle Johnny’s flag during the day I had also noticed a picture frame containing a picture of my mother next to it. The picture of my mother is one taken when she was younger,a teenager. In the picture my mother is standing in a pose that made her look like a classy dame from the 1940’s,like a movie star from that time period. It’s a great picture of her. That picture of my mother didn’t give me any second thoughts because I was concentrating solely on the flag. It was that same framed picture of my mother that had fallen to the ground! The frame didn’t break and had landed picture up. I picked it up,put it on the shelf again next to Uncle Johnny’s flag where it had been for years. As I did so I had another odd feeling hit me,can’t explain it. Once again I passed it off as me being crazy,and in my usual “talk to myself” personality I thought nothing further of that strange occurance. A framed picture of my mother sitting in the same spot for years suddenly falls. Oh well….
The next morning as I slept I had a dream about my mother. Many people have dreams about their family,but it’s different for me dreaming of my mother. You see,my mother has now been deceased for almost thirty years,and in that time I have only dreamed about her three times. Two of those dreams are stories in themselves,I will save those for another time. The third dream,the one I am about to tell is pertinent to this story and I now believe was a main catalyst for the journey to find Uncle Johnny’s Grave.
The dream started with me as my younger self playing with trucks in the yard. When my mother would call me in the house for things,like lunch or dinner (or anything else) she would always call me the same way:“Kenny,come inside. It’s time for (whatever).” I would take my time getting in there,as all kids usually do,but in this dream I went right in when she called me. As I got into the house she said to me “Before you eat I want to make sure that you bring your trucks in. It’s supposed to rain and I don’t want them to get ruined. Especially since those are the new trucks your Uncle Red gave you.” I then told her that I would go back outside and get the trucks and then come right back inside. Before I went out to get them,my mother said quite sharply:“I know your Uncle is coming over later and he said he wants to play hide and seek with you. He said this time you won’t be able to find him because he has a new secret hiding place. I told him he better let you find him because I don’t want you to be looking all over the world for him!” I told my mother that it was fun to look for him and that I’d find him anyway,no matter where he was hiding. The next thing she said to me was:“Ok,well,I made sure he lets you find him!” Then I woke up.
I suddenly realized after coming into clear consciousness that it was my mother who called me into the house the day before. I believe it was my mother who called me in to start looking for my Uncle Johnny who was hiding from me in his secret hiding place by luring me down to the basement to see his flag. I also believe now that it was my mother who dropped her picture off the shelf in the basement to remind me that she was going to visit me that morning while I slept. And lastly,I believe it was my mother letting me know that Uncle Johnny was playing hide and seek with me again,this time he tried his best to find a great spot to hide. I was determined (as I was in that dream) to find him and I now knew that my mother was going to help me to do that.
