Carlton Candler On My Mind

My beloved best friend of 30 years Carlton died in January 2008... some 20 months later, he, of course, is still with me every day, but this week, I've had two more dreams with my Strele as a guest star. In the first, we had both lost our jobs and were searching for new careers. We both enrolled in courses at some university and I stopped by to see if he had made a decision, and suddenly, he was enrolled in courses to become a dentist. I laughed and dared to ridicule his decision, and then realized he was serious—so then decided that I needed to follow through as well, and decided on a parallel curriculum as an orthodontist, convinced that we could form a practice together.

The second dream, on Thursday night, was much less focused, with Strele in his living room in the home he grew up in on Woodside Avenue in Lynchburg, Va., shag carpet and all... That's about all I remember, other than having a good chat and then waking up and knowing that we had visited for the second time in four days.

In most of our previous nocturnal visits, he was clearly connecting from the other side, while in both of these stopovers, he was very much alive, as I obviously visited a place of comfort, where I simply needed his presence... and advice.

Goddamn, I still miss my Strelie. As life moves forward and I am catching up to the age that he died, I am blessed that he continues to live in my dreams—in addition to the positive influence he delivers to every damn day. Carlton, god bless him, ever remains larger than life.