Uncle Delaney

I suspect that we all have dreams when we sleep at night.  I awoke this morning at 3:00 AM.  I had a dream.  I was at my Grandma Bowles’ house in Raleigh, West Virginia.  All of my teenagers were with me. We were there to visit Grandma since my kids had never met her.  She had died in 1983, long before mine were born. In this dream she had never died but was just old and active with the kids.  After visiting a while I asked her if Uncle Delaney had been around in while.  She just smiled and said, “No but he might show up some day.  In the dream I knew the he was living in Columbus, OH.  Soon when we were about to leave and I sitting in the kitchen, which was strange because her kitchen was very small and we usually sat in the living room, Uncle Delaney walked into the room.  Quietly he entered so as to surprise me.  He did. Uncle Delaney was carrying the guitar in a case across his back and a heavy chrome amplifier in his hand.  A tall light skinned woman was with him. I did not recognize her other than for these features.  In the dream I realized that Uncle always seemed to prefer women with these features. Uncle walked up to me as I stood up and said in his gravelly voice that I remember so well, “Boy, How you been?”  I reached out and hugged tightly. It was rather awkward as I was so much taller than he; it not that way the last time I had seen him as I was probably only 9 or 10 years old.   He had the same narrow face and the Bowles nose and a small frame so that his pants seemed to just hang onto his waist as if nothing was holding them up. 

We talked some small talk while tears starting welling up in my eyes as I slowly began to realize that Uncle Delaney had died while living in Columbus some 35 years or more ago.  After a short time Uncle Delaney said he had to go now but that it was good seeing me again. He told me I looked so much like his brother, my father, Larry. A tear or two appeared in his eyes.

We both walked out the door as he was leaving but I noticed we were now outside my grandma Holland’s home in Stanaford, W.Va.  I sat down on the flat stone steps on the small hill coming up from the road that ran by the house. The road ‘Y’ branched off right next to the house. As a child I rarely if ever walked that road; it had seemed to possess far too much adventure to do so then.  

Uncle  Delaney and the woman he was with hugged me one last time and waved good bye as they started walking up that rarely traveled road.  I watched as they disappeared around a bend a little ways up.  At this I was crying tears of sadness like a small child.  I woke up from this dream crying the same way as in the dream.  My face was drenched with tears even as I began to slowly realize it was just a dream.  All in a dream…