(dream story)

(This is a dream I had the other night. It was just so interesting, I wanted to put it up somewhere where I could definitely never lose it.)

We (Allison, Michael, and I) never met our father's father. He disappeared when I was too young to remember him, and before they were born. The story is that he was with a group of people, enjoying the outdoors, when he wandered away from the group and was never heard from again. This fact has always been hard on father. Can you imagine having to repeatedly crush a hope that your father is alive, convincing yourself that he's dead? It would be easier if he knew for sure what happened to him. Not to mention just missing him; not being able to ask him for parenting advice, for support when he needs it, for a parent's love. It was always hard for him, but it's been getting worse recently. The nagging weight of sadness has been getting to him, and he's been taking out his frustration on the people around him. He's been getting less patient, more prone to shouting and violence, less reasonable. It's gotten so bad that we (his children) are brainstorming what we could possibly do to help. Finally, we decide to go searching for our grandfather.
We start in the field where he was last seen, now called "Grandfather's Field" just for that reason. The searching goes on in secret- we don't know how our father would react if he knew what we were up to. He figures it out anyways- he smells it on us. "Does that smell familiar to you?" he asks our mother. "Doesn't it smell like... Grandfather's Field?" At which point, they (our parents) come after us. After catching up, they decide to join us. We form a line, and fan out to cover a wider area. I'm on the very end of the left wing, with Michael to my right. Michael stops in the midst of some trees, listening to the wind. "I'm going to ask our ancestors for help," he says to me. When the wind dies down, he whispers, "Where is my father's father?" Almost immediately, the wind starts back up. They've answered him! He starts to walk quickly, almost jogging, in some direction. Allison and I follow him without saying anything, and our parents loudly protest and ask us what's going on. We don't answer them, only continuing to follow Michael as quickly as we can.
We walk for an unknown amount of time- dream time works differently. Long enough for our parents to get tired and antsy. They're talking loudly behind me, complaining and asking annoying questions. "Shush!" I have to tell them, over and over; I'm afraid that I might miss something, or that Michael won't be able to hear the directions.
Finally he scrambles up a sort of hill-mountain-cliff. The ground is red sand and stone, and the plants are shriveled and spiny- we must be going up a desert mesa. It's a little difficult to get up, but I manage without having to hurt my hand grabbing for a spiny plant jutting out of the side of the hill-cliff. My parents are having more difficulty, and are falling behind. I make it up, and see Michael running, almost there. "There" being a large rock a little ways off to the side, shaped like a large easy chair. "Grandfather!" I shout, removing a branch from the chair-rock, "We've found you!" Beneath the branch are his bones, still in a sitting position after all this time. His skull is still wearing his reading glasses, and there are tatters of an old newspaper on his lap. We are sad to see his skeleton, but glad to know that now our father has a grave to visit and put flowers on and talk over, when he needs to. It's a bitter light feeling of victory. We are standing looking at our grandfather's bones, waiting for our father to catch up, and

I wake up.


That's the end of the dream.

(In real life, not dream-story life, this is partially true. My dad's parents died before I was five, but not like this.)