Leif in my dreams

I wonder how often I dream about Leif. I don't usually remember my dreams, any of them, but most of them that I do remember are not about Leif. Freud said dreams were wish fulfillment, but most of my dreams certainly aren't anything I'd actually wish and often make no sense. However, three days ago, I had a dream about Leif that could be described as wish fulfillment.

Leif was happy! That's the best thing about the dream, that he was vital, alive, happy, and smiling. He was the man in this picture, the hopeful man who graduated from college in 2003, his teasing, humorous self. He was slimmer again, and walked with a spring in his step.

Oddly, he was driving a vehicle that looks almost exactly like the Chevy Flex in the picture, a vehicle I was completely unaware of and I had to go looking on the internet to try to find a picture of what appeared in my dream. (The photo is from the Chevrolet website.) Odder still, he had some kind of contraption inside it that was a barbecue smoker and he was quite proud of that. He took pieces of equipment out to show me. I'm sure they bear no relationship to what would actually be in a smoker. One piece was a long sort of white metal tray. I don't remember the rest.

I do remember that when I awoke I was quite surprised that he would be driving a Flex, since he was always crazy about sports cars and loved his Mazda RX8, but then I remembered that he was also drawn to trucks and once had a big old Ford 150. Maybe he would have seen in the Flex a kind of enclosed truck that looked manly and full of muscle. The Flex he was driving was blue, like this one.

In the dream, he was together with J., the love of his life, and they were loving and affectionate and happy together.

It seems my mind was trying to write a happier ending to Leif's story, one I know he craved and wished for. Someone to love, especially J.

I was so glad to see him happy. I wish he had been. I hope if there is some kind of afterlife, he is happy now.