Dear Vanessa,

I found the dreams again. The ones I used to write down about you. The list is over a year old now, and reading it back doesn’t feel real. Like it happened to somebody else.

I don’t know why I started keeping them. Maybe so I’d have proof you still showed up. Maybe so I could pretend it was a diary of our marriage instead of a list of goodbyes.

Because that’s what they were. Goodbyes.

The doorbell rings and you’re gone. We’re at a party and you tell me you can’t stay. We pull in after the water park and I ask if you’re coming inside and you say “no, I’m sorry babe, you know I can’t go inside.” You always have somewhere else to be now. Even asleep.

You’d think the dreams would be the one place I get to keep you. They’re not. Even unconsciously, I’m the guy who knows. You tell me everything’s okay and I tell you it can’t be, because you’re dead. You say no babe, I love you, everything’s fine. And instead of shutting up and letting you love me, I argue.

One night you kept saying it was okay. So I asked where your car was. If you were alive, your car would be in the lot. I dragged you out to the parking lot to show you the empty space. To prove it. To win.

Your parents had just sold your car.

My brain knew that. My brain used it. Built a whole courtroom in my sleep just to convict you of being dead.

Congratulations to me.

Another night you were in your room and all I wanted was to lie down next to you before we went out. The whole dream was me trying to cross the room. Furniture everywhere. Stuff in the way. I spent the entire night reaching for you and never got there.

I don’t need a therapist to explain that one.

But there was one night I stopped. We were in the family room and I knew you were dead and for once I didn’t say it. I just let you be there. I woke up and went back to sleep and you were still there. Woke up again. Still there. A whole night of you, and I didn’t ruin it.

That’s the closest thing to a gift I got in the two years since you’ve been gone.

The first dream I ever wrote down, you were holding Luciana. I asked where you’d been, how you were alive. You said “I’m always going to be here to take care of you and Luciana.” We played with her for a minute.

Is that supposed to make me feel better? It doesn’t. You aren’t here. You aren’t anywhere. No, I don’t want some vague feeling that you’re “watching over me.”

I want the real thing.

Because guess what. All those warm fuzzies are temporary. I wake up. You disappear. And telling myself you’re visiting doesn’t change that I’m still alone here.

If you’re a ghost, that’s even more annoying.

You used to come back the next night. And the one after that. Even if it was just to leave again.

You come less now. And when you do, you’re blurry. Like I’m dreaming about a photo of you instead of you.

I stopped writing them down. Not on purpose. I just noticed one day I hadn’t in a long time.

And then yesterday I had one. Father’s Day. The end of the gauntlet of holidays.

I don’t even remember it. You were there, and then Luciana jumped on me and woke me up, and you were gone before I could catch what it was.

It was weird having one again.

There was a time that would have wrecked me. I’d lie there in the dark trying to claw it back. Reaching for it like I reached across that room full of furniture, and getting just as far. All that stuff I just said about not wanting the fake version of you? I’d have taken the fake. I’d have taken anything.

This time? Whatever. I had bigger problems. Like pretending to enjoy Father’s Day for Luciana.

I’m starting to forget you, Vanessa.

Besitos,

Michael