The dream always starts with me at Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I'm in Colorado, I have a wife and two children, and we're eating at my sister's place. My mother, father, aunt and uncle, and my sister's family are there.
Just after dinner starts, the phone rings. It's my office. They tell me the Attorney General has just been assassinated.
I am the director of the FBI, and the Attorney General is my best friend Dave.
I ask for details with disbelief, and after I've been properly briefed, I hang up the phone. Then I pick up the receiver and slam it down, again and again. I pick up the phone and throw it across the kitchen. I kick a cabinet and break it. I throw a stack of plates across the room.
I storm into the dining room where my family is giving me horrified looks. I stalk upstairs to pack my bag, I'm getting on the next flight to Washington.
My wife comes upstairs and asks what's wrong. I tell her Dave's dead and begin crying. She holds me in her arms and I cry a little longer. Then I pull myself together and tell her I have to go. I finish packing and walk downstairs.
I tell my family about Dave, and my mother begins to cry. He was like another son to her when we were in high school.
Then I walk out the door, and usually wake up in a cold sweat. Every night for a week I've been having this dream.