The Good: Yes, there was good. One night I had a vivid dream. I am the last person in the world to believe in prophetic dreams and would pay zero heed to any one else's and so expect no one to pay heed to mine. Nontheless, I'll relay it: I was looking into a room with hospital-type lighting , upon rows of adult-sized incubators with people in them. As I watched, one person got up out of his and began walking up a hallway, passing me to do so, and I saw as he passed that he was my brother Tony. I hadn't immediately recognized him because he had white hair, and a fuller, bigger, older face. he looked so much more handsome than I'd ever thought him, mostly because his naive eyes and long stringy hair always bothered me. He had  a lot of books under one arm and although our eyes met and mine saluted him, he passed on by as though he hadn't known me. I was despaired; my old boss at the USF bookstore was suddenly there, to explain, show there was control:when I wailed that he didn't recognize me, she said kindly,"He will . He has a lot to learn first, but he is learning it well, and then he will know you again."I began to lose some of my terror that this only him, an older him, did not know me.The books verified what she had said about learning; he had seemed of studious bent as he passed me. It was going to be ok, because he was doing his part. The next day 2 friends who had coincidentally lost brothers as I had (my brother Terry had died at age 11) were visiting me at home and the conversation went to there, possibly because I couldn't escape that dream's effect on my mood. I told my friends abut the dream. When I was almost finished, my next-door neighbor knocked and asked if one of my friends could help her move a bed. When he failed to return, I went to her side of the duplex. he was on the phone saying "I don't know if I can tell her, debbie,she was just telling us about a weird dream she had about him, this is going to devestate her.." Debbie being my sister's name, I shrieked"Is my brother ok? "And my neighbor said,"Sit down, Deanne---" He'd been found dead 4 days earlier but unclaimed in the morgue in Detroit. During the 8 days no one knew he was dead, his credit cards made thousands of dollars worth of purchases from Cincinnatti to Ontario. The man who reported the body to law enforcement had a broken jaw and waited til he got out of a hospital and returned and found the body still undiscovered; there was evidence my brother had punched him. My brother suposedly died while hooking a tank of laughing gas up to his mouth under a black plastic garbage bag while home alone. but my brother had a BS in chemistry; he knew about oxygen displacement.Exactly 9 months after his death, a girl we'd never heard of called and said to my parents "You have a grandson!" They tried to be good to the child in case he was, but by the time he was 4 the girl had been living with the guy who'd found my brother's body for 4 years, had a new child by him, and was demanding that my parents sign something that would allow the child to get my brother's social security benefits for 21 years. My mother told her,"We don't think he looks like any of us. he looks just like the man you're living with now. I'm sorry, but we cannot say he is for sure our grandson." The mom said,"What's the difference! It's not out of your pocket! No one gets that money if Ashley doesn't...why not let him have it? It won't hurt you any. You're a cruel person!" That was a lot of hurt to heap upon a family who'd already lost an exuberant, love-filled child. My father has never uncrossed his arms from over his chest since. Losing both sons wiped him out. But I, I got that dream. A dream that no matter how I turn it over in my musings, tells me that with God, all things are possible, and that my brother Tony is safe in His hands. That dream kept me from losing it. it gave me an anchor. It gave me a purgatory, a concept I had long-before dismissed, and that idea plus the timing of this dream as if synchronistic  gave me spiritual hope and renewal.

This page was last updated on:
November 18, 2006

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Boy's  been here ever since.

"If we can't come in and you can't come out, I'm not coming over anymore!"                                                 \

Tony fared  even worse than me. He'd been sitting 4 feet away from Terry doing his  homework while Terry strangled in the belt Tony had  told him to keep off the cat's neck and put around his own if he wanted to put it around a neck. (Terry had come to my room first, opening the door and showing me his arm in a belt sling, saying he broke it. I said "Get out! If you don't know how to knock, don't ever come in here again!" )Mom came in and asked where's Terry.."He's dead,"Tony said, jokingly."Oh don't do this to me," Mom said."Terry, stop it." Within a minute she was screaming. He was, in fact, dead. Tony dreamed that night that he was talking to Debbie and  Mom came and asked where Debbie was as Tony covered her with a sheet and said he didn't know. That made him think he'd killed Terry. He was the youngest Eagle Scout (13) ever;soon youngest alcoholic.He never could live with his burden.

13 years later he was found dead and I had another reason to retreat from actualizing myself. We'd been so close for 13 years; the 3 of us doing everything together. We had a cabin in the northwoods and were the only kids .We snowmobiled all over, played all day shared theawesome big sky wild nights of wilderness life.

me and Tony

I hated his long hair. After he was gone I met and married a man who painted Jesus on church windows. Once he made by accident a Jesus who looked just like Tony. It was his best window ever. That was so hard for me, as it was to me, his worst Jesus.

The boys went on a canoe -camping trip with my dad and the Boy Scouts on our Au Sable River in August 1970.L-R: Daryl Chrisman, Terry, Tony , Mr. Chrisman, Donnie Pelton, Gary Pelton. Chrismans lived next door and Peltons across the street. All theiir best friends lived all around us. For Terry, the funeral Mass was packed. Mom wouldn't give Tony an obituary or a funeral, saying he'd gone to hell.He hadn't been to Mass in 12 years. 22 years later, when Debbie died from hepatitis C from shooting up heroin a year after Terry died, Mom said she was a saint. Deb hadn't been to Mass in 35 years. Go figure. I'm talking, Mom really really thinks she is a saint.

Tony, middle, riding bikes in the snow, published in the local newspaper. Gary Pelton, right- his dad ran the music dept. for our school district. I babysat for Dr. Pelton and everyone else-- we were in the most awesome years of our lives, like ,in, Heaven. Everything was wonderful or perfect, We lived on a ski lake;the hockey rink ours.

But--you wouldn't believe me, but I have a picture. When I went back to the cabin in 1998, God sent my brothers right up to me out there in the woods on the river where I'd really left them , with all our fondest memories together. God was telling me everything was ok, in fact, it was His world.

that day

Brian Goff                             Tony Young 1957- 1983