My own tears woke me up this morning. Violent and unsettling. I was dreaming of her again and I let myself find comfort in a lie I can only tell when I’m asleep; that she’s available to me in a way that I could recognize.

It usually starts with me trying to call on memories of her. Most of them don’t even include her laughter, like most women in my family her develish sense of humor and biting sarcasm resulted in eyes that were always lit with wit and love.

This is often too temporary and I try to pull her from memory into my dreams, to try to say everything I wish I could have said, to show her the woman I am now, to introduce her to my better half…to sit with her on the hammock and read or watch the boys play cricket from the verandah.

I’ve done this many times over the past year and it always ends in terror. In the finite reality that I will never see her again. That we can never be as we once were and that it does not get better in time.