VISIONS AND VOICES…AND DREAMS …by Jim Stiles

LATE NIGHT VISITS FROM HERB RINGER & BILL BENGE…
Was it just a dream?

If there is one inexplicable thing in our lives, it must surely be the dreams we all experience almost every night as we lay our heads on the pillow and drift toward sleep. Often we forget them, sometimes we’re haunted by them. Occasionally they’re so intense, they wake us with a start. I have, from time to time, spent the better part of a day, troubled by some vague feeling of impending doom, wondering why I’m so unsettled. Then the memory of a previous night’s bad dream will return and the dread goes away.

Some humans have dedicated their lives to dream analysis and others have buried their dreams so deeply, they refuse to even acknowledge the experience, much less the meaning.

For me, it’s still part of the Great Mystery. Are dreams anything more than a manifestation of our own subconscious? Do they mean anything? Are the people who inhabit my dreams mere images in my head, or are they truly paying me a visit?

In times of extreme crisis, and especially when it involves death, we all seem to be more susceptible to the suggestion that our dreams carry a special meaning, or even a message from beyond the grave. For me, I’m a hopeful skeptic. I’ve often turned to my dreams to give me comfort, but I’ve never been totally convinced my own brain wasn’t just trying to make me feel better.

But two dreams stand out clearly in my mind; even if they were “just dreams,” they are still unforgettable and will be there still when I draw my own final breath.

I’ve lost my share of dear friends over the years and it seems like I usually lose them during these waning months of the year. And so lately, I’ve spent a bit of time remembering…

Most of them lived long, fruitful lives; others were taken away from us years or decades before they should have been. In some cases, they were just getting warmed up for this thing called Life.

Two of my dearest friends were Herb Ringer and Bill Benge. Herb died over twenty years ago, this December–he died on my birthday, in fact, and lived to the ripe old age of 85. But Bill died suddenly in October 2006, just a few months after his 60th birthday, at a time in his life when he’d never been happier.

But I would swear that both old friends paid me a nighttime visit, not long after they passed on, and I feel compelled to share those visits. I’d like to believe it really happened.

Herb Ringer’s health had begun to deteriorate in the summer of 1998. In August, he gave up his home of 46 years and moved into a retirement center; he was almost blind from macular degeneration and he felt he had no other choice. But I feared that he’d lose his identity, if he walked away from the old Smoker trailer he bought in 1952. And indeed, within weeks, he declined rapidly. For a man whose memory meant everything to him, Herb must have felt like an alien to himself, as the history of his life ebbed away.

In late November, I spent some time on the phone with Herb’s doctor. Though there was no immediate cause for alarm, it seemed to him that Herb had lost the will to live. I wasn’t surprised. Later that day, I described Herb’s declining health to, of all people, Bill Benge.

“You know,” I said, “I have a really bad feeling about Herb.”

“What about him?’ Bill asked.

“I don’t know why, ” I answered, “but I have a really strong feeling Herb is going to die on my birthday.”

 He looked startled. “Why would you say that?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. Just a feeling, I guess.”

But the feeling didn’t go away.

The next Zephyr press day was December 11, and of course, in those days, we really did print The Zephyr. I’d already planned an issue called, “Then and Now—the way we were, the way we are.” On the cover were two pictures of Herb. The first was a childhood image, taken by his father in 1921. The second was one of my own, shot in August,  when I helped him move.

On the morning of the 11th, I made the two hour drive to Cortez, Colorado, where The Zephyr was printed for 14 years. All day I was haunted by premonitions. In the early afternoon, I loaded the last of the copies into the truck and raced back to Moab, convinced I’d find a sad message on my answering machine when I got home. But when I walked in the door, the blinking red message light was dark. I breathed a sigh of relief and strolled over to the corner for a cup of coffee. An hour later I came home to the blinking light I’d been dreading.

Herb had died at 2 pm.

That afternoon, I contacted the hospital and then the retirement home. A wonderful woman there, an RN named Patty who had taken a personal interest in Herb, helped me deal with all those “arrangements” that had to be made. She was a lifesaver at a time when we are least capable of dealing with anything at all but our own grief.

A few days later, I had the most remarkable dream….

I was standing waist-deep in a swift clear mountain stream, but safely in the shallows and out of the current. Floating on his back in front of me and looking perfectly serene was Herb. Only my firm grip on his shoulders kept him in the backwater.

The banks were green and lush but mid-stream, granite boulders disrupted the water’s flow and created eddies and swirls. It looked dangerous to me, but Herb wanted me to push him into the current. I argued with him, insisted it was too risky, but he just nodded and smiled.

“It’ll be okay, Jim…just give me a push.”

I hesitated again and he put his hand on mine and patted it.

“Okay Herb.”

I reluctantly released my grip and as he floated by me, feet first, I gave his shoulders one last shove. The current grabbed him almost instantly and I watched Herb enter the heart of the stream. But as he passed one of the granite boulders, Herb was snared by an eddy and I watched with alarm as he spun in small circles near the rock.

“Herb!” I cried out. “Are you alright?”

But no sooner had I called out to Herb than the eddy released him into the free current. As he floated downstream, Herb Ringer raised one hand and waved goodbye.

The next morning, I felt very good.

*** *** ***

Bill Benge’s sudden death in October 2006, at only 60, was much harder to accept. He’d been plagued by bad health for decades (though he rarely complained) and had suffered personal losses of his own, including the early death of both his children. Still, through that last autumn, he was as happy as I’d ever seen him. From the neck up, Bill was at peace with the world; it was his body that failed so badly. When I learned late that Friday night that he had died of a massive heart attack, it was a shock but not really a surprise. But having to adjust to a world without the dry wit and sardonic observations and loyal friendship of my old pal Willie Flocko was almost unbearable.

As if to help me along, a few weeks later, I’d swear Bill dropped by in the middle of the night.

Bill often visited the Arches Book Company in the mornings. It had become his new hangout — the coffee was strong and the conversation was easy. And on the evening he died, he had briefly attended a party there, before heading home. In my dream, incredibly, this is where I found him. The place was full of Bill’s friends, but no one else could see him. He was sitting on the end of a couch and I almost fell over when he looked up at me and smiled.

“Bill?” I said, “Is that really you? You’re alive?”

Bill just nodded.

I was almost ecstatic. I missed my old friend so much and now, here he was, back at his regular place, sipping a coffee and enjoying the ambience, basking in the warmth of all his friends, even if they couldn’t see him. I turned away for a moment, to the large crowd around him, but when I looked at Bill again, he’d changed. It was still Bill, but he was a young man now, maybe 30 and in the peak of health.

I said, incredulously, “Bill…is that still you?’

He looked up at me and nodded and said, “It’s what happens.”

And then I woke up.

So what happened? Did my brain invent all this, to help me cope better with the loss? Was it, in both instances, wishful dreaming? Or did my dear friends somehow find a way back, just to let me know everything was okay. What would you prefer to think?

As my own life moves forward, as I acknowledge I am so much closer to the end than the beginning, and as I realize these are the happiest times of my life, the idea of leaving all this is painful. But if it means I might get the chance to share another cup of coffee with Bill, or hear my old friend Herb tell me another great story of the Old West, then I’ll know Heaven really happens. Even if it’s just a dream.

MORE THAN JUST A DAY DREAM?

But once, something happened to me that to this day is unexplainable. And I was wide awake. In 2004, on one of my Australia journeys, I decided to take a side trip to Thailand.

Flights from Perth to Phuket were dirt cheap at the time and I was still traveling alone–a fate that I feared would never change (but did, five years later). I had a direct flight to the island, but was completely overwhelmed and appalled by the crowded conditions there, and from the moment I landed, I wanted to go back to Aussieland.  Unfortunately, my ticket itinerary could not be altered, and so I spent much of the next week walking the beaches, talking to all the homeless dogs,  and eating spicy curry dishes at the restaurant below my hotel. 

But on one morning walk, something happened. Rather than trying to remember and revise that moment, here is what I wrote longhand into my journal, just minutes later…

I was walking along the beach, returning to Karon, after a long stroll to Kata, and the extravagances of Club Med. The long beach was teeming with people, in and out of the water, but I noticed a tight knot of bathers, just ahead, all staring out to sea. At first I thought they were simply watching the speedboat launch of a paraglider.  Then I noticed a jet ski, shorebound, with 2 or 3 Thai men on board. Finally I noticed that they were pulling a body, face up, his hands held high above his head. All of this occurred just as I arrived.

They carried the limp man’s body up and across the white sandy beach to a beach lounger, placed him on his back, and started CPR. The cyanotic color and the amount of water that came out of him as they applied chest compressions in the first few minutes, suggested to me that it was hopeless. 

Meanwhile a crowd had begun to gather. Mostly Europeans. Some with looks of concern and distress, most others simply curious. Happy to be spared the boredom of just staring at the incredibly deep blue sea, the faultless sky, and “working on their tans.” A middle-aged couple, just two meters from the body, chatted amicably. She sucked on a  Fanta orange soda through a  straw, he,  the stub of a cigarette. Several Thai boys came by and started laughing and pointing at the dead man, just inches from his feet. Finally a Euro man shushed them and said, “Be nice.”  They looked embarrassed and backed away, “But one said, “Why? We cannot be heard by him.”

There were probably 30 tourists now gathered around the dead man, plus the police, medica and perhaps a doctor. When a particularly stunning young woman in a bikini squeezed in front of me for a better look, I found myself ogling her  and I thought, ‘Damn, I’m as bad as the rest of these gawkers.’ 

At the center of all this was the dead man— or soon to be declared dead. He was young, Asian, in his 20s, black hair, slender, dark eyebrows, wearing black, knee-length bathers with some sort of intricate yellow flower pattern upon it. Most of the time, I could only see his feet as they continued to work on him. and I could see his feet turn greyer with each passing moment. Sometimes the crowd would shift and I could see his face, partially obscured by a respirator. 

It seemed hopeless, and was; still the medics persisted, giving him erratic bursts of chest compressions. Once again, someone moved and I could see the young man’s face. Inexplicably, I thought to myself, ‘I wonder if he’s watching all this.’ Then, startled by my own suggestion, I posed another question, never spoken aloud: ‘Can you hear me?’

I cannot explain this. I sensed an eerie stillness all around me and in the next instant, a chill passed right through me, almost like an electrical current. I felt overwhelmed, as if I wanted to cry. I thought again, ‘Is that really you?’ And again, a charge of electricity surged through me. Like a cold shudder. It was so profound, so deeply felt,that I looked around me to see if anyone else had noticed or felt it. Nobody had.

Weirdly, I asked him if he was okay…he said he was. Then in my head, I heard him say, “I will see you again sometime.” Then, just as quickly as the feeling had struck me, it passed. The feeling subsided. It came back again just briefly, but with not nearly the force of before. And then it went away for good.

I had no idea how much time had passed. I assumed just a few seconds. I looked back at the body and at that precise moment, they were putting him on  a scoop litter, to transport his body to a hospital/morgue. The crowd broke up, the bathers returned to their chaise loungers and beach towels. I walked to the water and stood knee-deep in the shallows for a few minutes. Looking out to the place where he had drawn his last breath of life. I thought of what I had heard inside my own head: “I will see you again sometime.”

I walked back to the hotel and wrote down the account, exactly as I had remembered it from just a few minutes past. To this day, I have never experienced anything quite like it, and have wondered if I had simply wanted to hear that boy’s voice, or if he was desperate to “talk” to someone, before he slipped away. 

I wonder sometimes if indeed, I will see that young boy again. Maybe he’ll be standing there with Herb Ringer and Bill Benge.

Jim Stiles is Founding Publisher and Senior Editor of the Canyon Country Zephyr.

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