I had a dream the first Monday morning after our vacation:

I was walking inside a large grass area enclosed by a stone wall many feet high. I was walking near the wall towards a large black curtain that separated the large area from another similar smaller area. Dylan walked by me and handed a roll of money that I didn’t bother to look at. He said, “They’re small. It is all there.” I wanted to say something to him but I couldn’t remember what in that moment. And he was gone.

I felt a horrible pain in my gut. I continued to walk. Crying but not releasing like I felt I wanted to or needed to. I knew that wasn’t all. I knew there was $27 somewhere. When I got to the smaller grass area, I purposely fell face down into a small patch of soft white coral sand and tried to cry. To release some of the pressure. Dylan didn’t want to go. He kept the $27. He wanted us to continue to have this connection. As I lay face down in my work clothes crying, I wondered how I could bring him back so I could spend more time with him. Realizing I was in my work clothes and had to get to work, I stood up and brushed the sand off me and started to wipe the tears from my face.

Just when I thought that my memories of Dylan had been exhausted something comes along that brings back a memory of him.

This time. An airplane. We are going to go on a big boy vacation as a family this year. It is the first big vacation that we have taken as a family, probably since before our daughter Marisa was born. I would say it was the year that a barely in school aged Dylan dropped his Tamagotchi toy over the edge of the Grand Canyon. It remained within his sites while we were at a particularly nice lookout point. Just teasing him. He didn’t really care about the big hole in the ground like I thought he might, but he was devastated by the loss of his beloved Tamagotchi.

The airplane. Marisa is nearly 17 years old and has not yet been on an airplane. I know that is probably hard to believe, since many of the people where we live have taken their kids nearly around the world it seems. In about a week that will change, when we go on vacation. Well, I think Dylan was probably in the third or fourth grade when he first went on an airplane. The only time, he went on an airplane. Marisa was young. One or two. We decided that we were going have Dylan go on a trip, through the school, to Sacramento and the Gold Country in Northern California under one condition. One of us would need to be a chaperon. I would be a chaperon. Which was really funny. I was surprised by the things I found myself doing for Dylan. I remember registering Dylan for school and seemingly unable to get any answers from anybody. I just kind of bull dosed our way to somebody to find out what the hell we were supposed to be doing to get Dylan registered. I would have never done that kind of thing prior to us having Dylan. Anyway, I had myself so worked up before going on this trip. I was stressing about having to watch a bunch of kids that I didn’t know that I gave myself a nasty migraine headache. The first one I ever had. I thought I was going to throw up.

Of course, it was not that bad, but by the time I got a little more comfortable in the setting, it was time to head back home. I don’t really remember the plane flight. I think I had myself too stressed out. There were a couple highlights though. I remember enjoying some time with Dylan and another boy he was hanging out with at the time, while they panning for gold in the American river. I remember they just kept sloshing everything out of their pans like they were expecting a ping pong ball size nugget to reveal itself. It was pretty funny. I would show them how they should be doing it, and of course they got bored real fast and moved onto throwing rocks in the river. I tried to show them how to skim rocks over the surface of the water. We mostly failed because of the rough surface and the current.

The other highlight was kind of strange, because it seemed like the best time I had with Dylan on the trip. Everybody was sitting at picnic tables under a large fabric tarp working on a craft. This craft, one of several during the trip, involved creating a design in a small sheet of tin using a small hammer and a hole punch. What made it strange is that everybody was there, but Dylan stayed right next to me the whole time and we worked on his craft together. I think he missed his mommy by that point, and I was the substitute. Nonetheless, I took it, because I didn’t really get to spend a lot of time with him and he wasn’t always interested. I think he enjoyed that time with me too, because he later said it was his favorite craft he did.