Since I was a little girl I’ve had the same dream over and over again where I am a part of a 737 crashing. It’s a funny thing as I grew up in airplanes, riding solo in them back and forth from Florida to Texas when I was 8 and 9 years old. I sat in my 1st cockpit when I was 4 years old, wearing the captains hat of the man who later would become my 1st stepfather. I’ve never feared them consciously. In fact, I would love to learn to fly them.

My mom worked as a flight attendant for the airlines in the 80s. I’ll never forget the Delta crash in 1985 at DFW airport. It was when science and the airline industry really felt the impact of microbursts. An entire plane of people, shoved out of the sky and on to the flat plains of DFW airport. My mom was due in on her Braniff flight during the same time at DFW, and my Me Ma and I watched in riveting terror the 5PM Dallas news which had nothing but the continuous horror of the crash. Though my mother made it home safely that night I don’t remember anything beyond my Me Ma and I sitting there glued to the TV, not talking, no way of communicating with her until she got back to East Texas where we sat, waiting on her arrival. I was 5 years old. Airplane crashes were more frequent back then.

Since that time I have had dreams of 737 crashes. Sometimes I am in the plane and it starts to go down. People start screaming but I’m not scared. Other times I witness the planes falling from the sky with me at a distance. But I’ve never had such a dream as the one I had last night.

A bunch of people myself included were having a BBQ in the front yard of my Me Ma’s house. Her house has a massive front yard with lots of tall oak trees. The President of the US was there. We were all chatting and eating. Occasionally a drone would sweep in and hover, protection for the president was my guess. Then the president’s helicopter flew over. And then what was presumably Air Force One flew over. But it was flying erratically. It was upside down, and zig zagging. Some people thought this was an impromptu air show and they started clapping. But I knew better.

Soon you could see the fire on the left engine. The plane dipped down closer and we were, for several seconds, frozen in terror. And then, like the Red Sea parting, people began to run away. Fiery debris started raining down as the plane starting breaking apart and catching the tops of the trees on fire. Burning jet fuel cascaded on to everything. People were screaming and trying to escape. My biological instincts kicked in and for a brief moment I tried to escape but realized I was surrounded by burning airplane debris and falling, burning trees and smoke. I was not going to escape this crash. It was going to consume me. And it did. I felt my hair catch on fire first, and then my face. It felt like the heat from a bad sunburn. I could no longer breathe. My lungs sucked in acid heat and started burning up. My body started to burn and my knees buckled and I collapsed. I was not scared. I was not feeling any pain. I was just burning. Something I’ve always said (spiritually) that I wanted to do was burn like the sun, always shining. And now I was consumed by fire. I sat there and burned up in that airplane debris for the 1st time ever having had come into full contact from start to finish with the crash I had dreamt about since I was young.

But I did not die. My body was gone and I was consumed in fire. But I was still there, alive in those flames. I lived.