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You're going to be okay, bud
Chuck Bryant was ten or eleven when the dream came, and he remembers how specific it was. His grandfather walked up to him, told him he was going to be okay, and called him bud. That was the whole dream.
He doesn't think anything metaphysical happened. He reads it as a kid trying to make sense of losing his grandfather, with a dream providing some relief. Now 55, he still remembers it clearly, and it still makes him emotional all these years later.
Why do people dream of loved ones who died?
Dreams draw heavily on a person's strongest emotional memories, and the death of someone close is among the strongest a child can have. During REM sleep the amygdala, the brain's emotional center, is highly active, while the prefrontal regions that police logic are quieter. Researchers who study grief have long documented that dreams of the dead are common among the bereaved. Sleep researcher Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley has proposed that REM sleep helps take the sting out of emotional memories.
Why do childhood dreams stay so vivid?
Memories tied to strong emotion are stored more durably, because the amygdala signals the hippocampus to strengthen them. James McGaugh at the University of California, Irvine spent decades showing that stress hormones released during emotional events boost this storage. Each time a memory is recalled and retold, it is renewed. Emotional memories from childhood that are revisited often can last a lifetime.
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