September 9, 2001. Gary and I were skating at a hospital on top of a huge hill overlooking a valley. An ambulance came and took out a dead woman. Gary asked me why she wasn't moving or blinking. They hadn't closed her eyes yet. She must have died on the way. A car full of family and friends came in with the ambulance. They were all crying and hugging each other. One woman screamed hysterically and grabbed at the woman's body asking her to wake up. I had to tell Gary that her soul went to Heaven. I didn't believe a word of it, but I knew it'd be easier for him to understand. Two days from now, at 9 AM, the planes will hit the World Trade Center killing over 3,000 people. I will tell Gary that there is no God, and all of this is meaningless. But today, there is a God. And he has a plan for him. He doesn't know it, but a year from now, our family will be torn apart and I will move far away and won't see or talk to him for five years. And as we sit on the hood of our car, the sun goes down and he asks me what I want out of my life. I tell him I don't know. On and on we run away from the things we are afraid. On and on we run away from the things we are afraid. On and on we run away from the things we are afraid. I don't tell him about the dream I had the night before where I'm riding in a car full of strangers and singing to some song I've never heard and smoking a cigarette and we swerve off the road and hit a tree. I go through the windshield and hit the edge of a fence, dislocating my jaw and flipping me into a wall where my neck is broken, and my skull is fractured. I bleed to death in excruciating pain.
I will have this dream periodically until I meet all of the strangers, one by one introducing them all to one another until we are a close group of friends. I will set these events in motion, and I will die. But today in the warm light of the sunset, I don't see it. I just see the sunset. I smile back and shake my head. I have absolutely no idea. I am afraid.