I had a dream

A couple of months before my older brother was killed in a plane crash, I had a strange dream about him. In the dream, he had recently returned from the African country where I was stationed during my time as a Peace Corps Volunteer. He was speaking in the national language. The funny thing was, though, that he was speaking this African language with the inflection that one would use when speaking English. I confronted him, asking, "Did the Africans understand you?" and he was defensive saying, "Yes, of course they did." The language he was speaking is a tonal language that is only understood if you use the right cadence. Therefore, if one speaks the language using the inflections and intonations that one uses to speak English, none of the people in the country would understand a word.

Impressed as I was at his vocabulary in this language, I asked his oldest daughter, "How long was he there?" She replied, "One week." This further impressed me, but I was still confused about how anyone there understood him when his delivery of the language was so off. So there I was, knowing full well that he was being dishonest because there was no way that anyone understood him when he spoke without using the right tones to convey the meaning of what he was saying. But I couldn't disprove him because we were in the US and there were no native speakers of the language around to help me prove my point. We were at an impasse, and, in the dream, I decided that this was okay and congratulated him on his travels and his quick mastery of language.

I told him about this dream, but never really decided what it meant. Initially, I thought that I was feeling guilty because I had promised him that I would do something, and I hadn't gotten around to doing it yet. Looking back on it now that he is dead, I wonder if it was just that I wanted to make some kind of connection with him because I had told him a few months before this dream that I wanted to start talking about my Peace Corps experience more. He responded very positively, encouraging me to tell my stories and saying that he was always proud that I had this experience. I sort of envisioned that he would help me somehow with translating my experience into something that I could understand better and that I could share with others. He died less than a month ago. Since then I dream about him almost every night, but none of those dreams stand out in my memory like this one does. I can't describe the pain I feel due to his absence.