A dream - Jerral

I was sitting in a rocking chair in front of this gas station in Mt. Pleasant on the north side of town that we used to stop at on the way to Clint's.  I was rocking back and forth pretty good, thinking about these stunts I'd seen earlier that had put this idiot in the hospital.  It was a news report I was remembering.  It was funny, so I laughed.  Then I saw Sam coming up the hill, and I thought, "Time for a smoke," and started fumbling in my pocket for a couple of cigarettes.  Then to my left, I saw Jerral walking up.  He was just like the last time I saw him.  Stocky and healthy with a shock of unruly blond hair, arms so big they kind of stuck out to the side a little as they hung naturally from his shoulders, and there was this grin on his face that got bigger and bigger as he got closer.  I jumped up out of the chair in disbelief, and I said, "No, no, I knew it, you're ok, you're not dead," and I ran over and gave him a hug and started crying, saying into his shoulder, "Why, why man, why did you scare us like that?"  And then we sat down on a couch and he started to explain how he'd almost died, but it was his wife who had saved him, and then his voice started to recede and things started to fade, and I said out loud, "This isn't real.  You're dead."  And I burst into tears and woke up.