Washington, DC writer W. Ralph Eubanks talks regularly to his father--in his dreams--and has ever since his father died when Eubanks was 18:

But the dreams have changed as the years have gone by. At first, I was still Daddy's little boy, the one who followed behind him in a freshly plowed Mississippi field, carefully placing my footprints in the same place as his. Our relationship in my dreams mimicked the one imprinted in my childhood memories. Years later, we became equals in my dreams, just two men sharing time together. This change happened when the first of my three children was born 14 years ago.

"Make sure you enjoy him," my father told me one night in those brief hours that a newborn baby allows a parent to sleep.