An ever-present-ever-aching feeling.

I've finally had a dream about Brian. He was a little boy, at a piano recital, a replica of a picture we have of him around seven or eight. Throughout the dream, I kept thinking, Oh good, I'm finally dreaming of Brian, he's with me, he's not gone.

My biggest fear is that if I stop thinking of him, he'll fade away. He will truly be gone.

Funny what the mind does to capture and hold on.
It knows that memory fades, like being in a car, on a road moving away, and as you move forward, everyone else is left behind. They exist; but they are not in your focus. And that focus becomes less and less sharp with age.

Now, I'm sorry I don't have more pictures, or videos or more artifacts of his life.

I was cleaning the cat dish yesterday, (Newkie, his cat, moved with us to Port Orford), and a sudden ache passed through me. I had used the dish for over a year, and never thought about it one way or another. I was thoroughly scrubbing that dish, in and out and around and through, when a thought stopped me in my tracks:   I had just removed the last of Brian's fingerprints;  his DNA had now been destroyed forever.

This is just the  ever-present ache that comes over me suddenly, and I don't have to go out of my way, on a daily basis to experience it. It comes to me when I least expect it, watching a movie, seeing someone, driving down the road, fixing a meal.

His friend Michael Kohan put together a CD of Brian's favorite music.
I've not played it yet. I will cry and rejoice as I listen to it. And that is a most precious state of affairs.