The Warning on the Shore

My grandmother left us in the autumn of 1995. Two years later, I had a dream so clear it felt more real than waking life. She was standing on a familiar beach, the one from our childhood summers. She was looking out at the stormy sea, her dress whipping in the wind.

She turned to me, her face full of worry, and spoke about my cousin. “The water is so cold,” she said, her voice full of fear. The dream shifted, and I saw her kneeling in the wet sand, holding my cousin’s jacket. She kept repeating, “He went too far out.”

Two weeks after this dream, my mother called. My cousin had been caught in a riptide while swimming in the ocean. He had been pulled far from shore.

The dream shook me deeply. The beach in my vision was the exact same stretch of coast where the accident happened. My cousin was rescued by a lifeguard. My grandmother never said he was lost in the dream, only that he was in danger. So when my family panicked, I was able to stay calm, telling everyone he would be okay.