Dream: Grandma crashes pickup, chased by bear, man comes back to life

Dream: 3/7/08

On the farm. Parents are gone for some reason. We have to do some work, though. Grandma Eva is driving the ancient International pickup — Kari and I next to her. At 96 years old she has never gotten a driver’s license or learned to drive — and this is evident. She swerves all over the gravel road — even more so because the steering on this old rusted pickup is so loose that you have to turn the wheel about ¼ turn in either direction before anything actually happens. But when I look at her, she is not nervous in the least. In fact she’s smiling and having a great time. I am sure we’re going to go into the ditch. I tell Kari to tell her not to drive on the edge of the road, where the huge lumps of sod are from the maintainer — but too late, she’s already over there…

We go into the ditch. Grandma keeps driving as though nothing happened. Over and around little lakes, huge mounds of earth, pieces of concrete drainage pipes. Bouncing up and down like crazy…

This ditch is much deeper than I thought, too. I look over to the left side (next to the road), and notice there are some deep caves dug into the side of the ditch. In one of them I see a bear – or think I see one… “I hope that bear doesn’t come out after us,” I think to myself…

At some point the inevitable happens: grandma plows into something and rolls the pickup over.

We get out and try to push the pickup back up onto its wheels – lifting the back end. As we’re doing this, I see/hear the bear coming behind us. We manage to get the truck flipped over, get back in and drive – the bear now chasing us…

Then we’re on the farm again, working on the pickup, I think, by the garage. I’m in the big pen next to the barn, feeding or doing something… There’s no cattle in there except for one giant bull — and he sees me and decides he doesn’t like me in there, charges as I run and jump the fence. But he breaks right through it — the biggest bull I’ve ever seen — and now HE’S chasing us… With the dog I manage to get him back in the pen. I find a plank to fix the fence with — there are a bunch of them pre-cut the perfect length, and I realize this must happen frequently. But while I’m trying to fix the fence, the stupid bull gets out again…….

At some point we find an old man lying in a field, near death… He dies in front of us. We put him in the garbage can in the back of the truck, close the lid, and take him into town.

When we get there and take him out of the can, he still looks dead — but I notice his stomach moving slightly. He’s still alive. He opens his eyes, looks at us. It really is as though he was dead and came back to life — he is so happy to discover that he’s not dead, he jumps to his feet – now seeming years younger.

……….

Later on, dad is home, and he asks what I’ve been doing all day. I start to tell him the whole story, about grandma driving, crashing, the bear, the dead guy, etc. Then it occurs to me: wait a second, grandma can’t drive… And I realize that it was a dream (in the dream). But then what DID I do all day? I can’t for the life of me think of what I actually did while they were gone, so I don’t know what to tell him…

…

(But, then, I should really just shut my bloody trap. Shouldn’t I.)