Bread Crumbs: ANY TIME YOU THINK OF ME

My friend Tommy had come home in the spring of his first year of college with blinding headaches. When I went to visit him, his Mom told me he had a brain tumor. I asked her if it could be removed and she replied that they were Christian Scientist and many were praying for his recovery.. I prayed too and visited every couple of weeks all summer. When I came home from college for Christmas break, I found him optimistic but so weakened that his main exercise was squeezing a tennis ball. He had pain medication but there would be no surgery. Back at college, I was busy and his Mom said he did not like to talk on the phone, so I stopped calling.



In February, I had a dream of Tommy. He appeared well and told me he was no longer in pain, that I could visit any time just by thinking of him. I woke remembering the dream and looking forward to seeing him at spring break.  In March, the week before I was to go home, I was winding up a conversation with my mother about plane arrangements when I asked her to tell Tommy that I wanted him to throw that tennis ball at me when I walked in the door. Her tone changed as she told me that Tommy had died in February and she hadn’t wanted to tell me that over the phone. I told her about my dream two weeks earlier and she said “Yes, that’s when Tommy died.”

It seems there’s more to dying than meets the eye. At first I was devastated and angry at God and family and doctors that such a fine young man had not been saved. Slowly the memory of the dream pushed the anger away, leaving only the sadness, a lasting tribute to my love for him.

O    Tommy was right; even now he is with me - always young and smiling - whenever I think of him.


Any Time You Think of Me by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. For permission to use contact randmxcentric@gmail.com