I dreamed I saw my brother alive again. I was sitting in a public place thinking of him, and then suddenly he was there before me, and for a moment I didn't know if it was a mind's-eye thing or if he was really there. But he was really there. I leapt up and held onto him tight. He was surprised by the emotion of the reaction but seemed pleased.

In the dream it was just one day since we'd been told he'd been killed. In the dream, rather than what happened at the Edina bus stop, it was a home invasion, and as we talked Chris bragged about taking on “the black-eyed sonofabitch.” The guy was used to seeing fear from his victims, Chris said, but “he'd never come across anyone as crazy and drugged-out as me.” I smiled. Then it dawned on me that this was part-confession: Drugged out? Chris was using again. And as we walked, I said cautionary words about addiction that weren't landing, I could feel him pulling away. So I thought of my own battles with alcohol and said to him, “I know, I know,” and walked us over to a wall of craggy rock. I circled a part of it with my pen and said “This is how small life can feel without it.” Within the small area I'd circled, a fraction was of a different colored quartz, and I now circled that smaller fraction and said: “But this is how small my life felt without you.”

This landed. He seemed to get it. Then I said c'mon we have to tell Dad and Karen you're alive.