A few weeks ago I had the first dream of my grandfather since he died in 2022. Most of the time when I see a relative who has passed on my lucid dreaming kicks in and we end up talking about them not being alive, but bar none, they’ve always been great visits that I have been glad to have. What makes this one a little different, and worth writing about on the internet is the very context in which it appeared.

We were sitting in the cabin of an old ship. He was dressed in a peacoat, a toboggan, and had about three days stubble of a beard. The latter of which I had never in my life seen him with. I did, however, immediately recognize who he was dressed as. He was still himself, but he was 100% Henry Fonda’s character Jack Beauregard from the end of the movie My Name is Nobody.

This was one of many westerns that we watched together numerous times, and talked about even more. In the years before I understood that the gunfight was staged, I thought the ship was taking him to heaven. It was kind of a metaphor before I knew what that was either. The ship was taking him out of the west and to the next plane or something equally profound to a five year old.

Later, I always thought about it, the ship’s name Sundowner, and the letter at the end talking about changing times and old age, much like my grandfather would do when I called him on Sundays.

I don’t remember if anything significant came up in our dreamland discussion and it wasn’t really like there was a message I needed, just more like “I am fine, on board, remember this? Watch it again, I’m there, too” thing.

It’s doubly funny now because my son’s hair still hasn’t darkened so he’s still blonde with blue eyes looking (and oft times acting) for all the world like Nobody. My grandfather even mentioned the comparison once.

A lot of the advice in the letter in that movie could have come straight from my grandfather to his great-grandson at one time or another. I think some of it did come to me. It was talking about these kinds of films in between laughing at the slapping scene and the scenes are the circus, that life was carved out to make sense. Never directly, that was taboo. And some times, when moral ambiguity came into play, gears would shift to things like Once Upon a Time in the West or High Plains Drifter or Pale Rider. It’s like some cowboy version of Kipling’s If. What it means for me, or why it came passing along now, is harder to ascertain. Maybe something; maybe nothing. Who’s to say? But, for a bit we were there talking just like times before when everyone was still pretending everything was okay.

Above all, I think it would have made him laugh to hear it, and then he’d say something about how he felt the same way about the world not being for his kind anymore and that the years didn’t bring wisdom they just brought old age.

He always said he was born in the wrong time, and so much of what he wanted didn’t fit with the world that he was in. I’ve listened to the ending letter of Jack’s a few times now, and I think more and more of aging is coming to grips with being those romantic fools. I think about what the world will be like if my son lives as long as my grandfather did and what he’ll see in the 22nd Century. Hopefully we can manage to “preserve a little of that illusion that made his generation tick.”

The advice is timeless.

There’s not a higher resolution uploaded, but the voiceover is the part to keep with you. Punctuated beautifully by Ennio Morricone’s score.

Spend some time with the score, too.