As a child, I always enjoyed the dreams I would have.

However, when I was 13, I began having a repetitive dream, something that had never happened to me before. Also, the dream would always cause me to wake up in fear and sweats. It lasted every night for about two weeks. The dream was of a car accident. The dream was in black and white except at the end. I knew the accident was taking place in darkness of night time. As the dream progressed, night after night, I would go to bed hoping I would not have it anymore because it began to scare me. I would see a car traveling on a road and notice it go off the shoulder. Dirt and rocks would spew into the air from the tires and then it would violently wreck by itself. As it wrecked, everything would turn purple, and I would wake up. I would question myself, wondering if someone had died. I was unsure of the answer until the last night I had it. It was then that I became certain somebody had, indeed, died.

Days earlier, I had considered telling my mother about the dream, but decided not to. My mother and I were extremely close. I have four siblings, and if you were to ask them if mom had a favorite, they would all say it was me.  My mom and dad were divorced and she and her new boyfriend, Teddy, were going to Miami for a weekend (we lived about 125 miles from Miami). The evening they left was the last time I would have the dream.

The next morning, I was at my friend’s house, three doors up from our home. My friend and I were playing around in the back of their property which was large and had a lot of debris that two young kids could hide in. My friend’s mother called my name, just as she had done hundreds of times before. This time when she called, I looked up and said to myself, "My mother is dead." There was absolutely no doubt about it whatsoever! At that second, you could have had a thousand people tell me otherwise and I would have said you were wrong! I decided not to answer her call because I didn't want to accept it. A few seconds later, she called again. I still would not answer. My friend then said, "My mom’s calling for you. Are you gonna go see what she wants?” I reluctantly said yes, while my only real thought was that I wanted to start walking to Albany, N.Y.  I don't know why I was thinking that, other than my mom was born and raised in Albany.

I met my friend’s mom at their front door and she said, "Let's walk down to your house. I have something to tell you." I remember thinking, "You don't need to tell me; I already know. My mom was killed in a car accident last night." She never was able to tell me. I had already begun feeling distress over not telling my mom about my dream.

As we walked into my yard, I noticed many cars there. I could hear my 15-year-old sister screaming. We went in the house where my siblings, my dad, and many friends had gathered, all waiting for me. My brother, Scott, 16 years old and in tears, blurted out, "Mom was killed in a car accident last night." I thought of saying, "I know." Instead, I decided to cry, too. The next day, as I sat on my bed crying, my father came in my room to console me. I was filled with guilt, and I told my father about my dream. Wanting me to feel better, he told me to try not to worry about it.

I didn't tell anybody else about the dream for about 15 years. I absolutely had an inner knowledge that my dream was of her death. As the years went by, I would study the dream, trying to make sense of it. I found out that her accident happened just as I had dreamt it. It was late at night and there was a doctor in the car behind her and Teddy. She was driving and she veered off the shoulder into loose gravel and then hit a telephone pole. The doctor said she was killed instantly.

The only aspect of the dream that did not make any sense was the color purple. It seemed so important in the dream, yet it made no sense to me. I was certain they were driving Teddy's brown Cadillac, so it couldn't be the color of the car. As I got older, I even visited the accident scene, which was only 50 miles from our home, hoping to find something purple there, but to no avail.

Fast forward 25 years, as I sat with my uncle on his front porch. We started talking about mom and the accident. I decided to tell my uncle of my dream. I told him the only thing that didn't make any sense to me was why the color purple seemed so significant in the dream. When I told him this, he had a very stunned look on his face. I realized he knew something, and I said to him, "WHAT?" He said, "You do know that they were driving Teddy Jr's car that night, don't you?". I said, "No." He said, "Teddy Jr. had a 1969 purple Mustang. Teddy and your mom were taking it to Miami to get new tires for it because it was cheaper to buy them in Miami." I wasn't shocked by his statement at all. I was relieved to finally know why the color purple mattered.

Thank You for providing a forum to express something that was extremely distressing for me for several years after my mother’s death. For many, many years I felt I was cursed to have had this experience. As I have gotten older, I have become more comfortable about it. I also had another experience when I was able to sense the death of a former girlfriend who also died in a car accident.