A few months later, I had another vivid dream that turned out to be the most important one of all in sealing the deal. In this dream, we were outdoors in a woodsy setting. Tom was dressed in a heavy, plaid, outdoorsy shirt. I noticed that his hair was distinctly darker and straighter than his usual hair, but it was definitely Tom. Something was odd about his appearance being slightly different than usual that I didn’t immediately understand. But he had our much loved and long deceased dog under his arm. With a big smile on his face, Tom came over and gave me a hug and a very long kiss goodbye. He backed away and I waved goodbye to him and our dog.

I woke up feeling pretty good. I thought to myself, ah, I understand this dream. It's the goodbye kiss I never got because Tom's illness took a sudden turn for the worse, and he was gone very quickly. Not that I was sure I understood how to interpret all this dream stuff, but that seemed like a pretty good explanation. I was deeply touched that Tom had come back to kiss me goodbye. He had realized that we didn’t get to say goodbye and made up for it. Okay.

That morning, as I was vacuuming, I sat down to take a break and turned on the TV. An old black and white movie based on the Jack London novel Call of The Wild was airing. Although I'd seen almost every old black and white movie from the classic era of Hollywood, somehow, I'd missed this one. It was the Yukon Gold Rush story where a very young Clark Gable stars with a very young Loretta Young and a very special dog. I have always loved Clark Gable and seen a resemblance between him and Tom, and I'm not the only one who has remarked on their similarities. Tom shared Gable's easy masculinity, quick wit, teasing sense of humor, and they're both mustache guys.

So, I decided to ditch vacuuming and watch the movie. As I watched it, I noticed that Gable had darker, straighter hair, and was wearing an outdoorsy shirt just like Tom in my dream. The dog was different, but in the movie scenes, the way Gable holds the dog under his arm and the warmth of the relationship is just like Tom and our dog in my dream. It certainly seemed as if this movie and my dream had some intriguing parallels.

It turned out that at the end of the movie, Gable and Loretta Young must say a long, loving goodbye, because she has to go back to her husband, who turns out to be alive. Clark gives Loretta one of his biggest, longest, most heartfelt kisses and is left waving goodbye to her with the dog by his side. This part of the movie was just like my dream, where Tom kissed me very deeply, then waved goodbye with our dog right by his side. I couldn't help but think that this is how Tom wished he could have kissed me goodbye, if he'd had the chance, and further, that perhaps this movie was his way of making sure I knew that he wanted to give me that goodbye kiss. What else can I think but that he sent me the dream to make sure I watched the movie and got the message that the movie kiss and the dream were real in that otherworldly way that I still don't quite understand?

I wrote up my special dream and was content with Tom’s fabulous goodbye kiss, movie style, expecting that that was the beginning and the end of what this dream had to tell me. And I was very wrong. Call of the Wild would turn out to be my absolute proof of Tom’s continued existence in the afterlife. And like the final goodbye kiss in the movie, this was a final goodbye to the Tom I thought I was married to.