I dreamt of my mom two nights ago in a way I’ve never seen her. She was in a hospital bed, sick again – but she didn’t look it. Her hair was short, but not the white, post-treatment pixie. It was softer around her face and was the dark black it had been through my childhood. Lying awake and tear stained at 4am thinking back, I knew I’d seen her look that way, but had no memory of it. As a few minutes passed, I realized where I knew it from – her, in a hospital bed, with that style of hair – that’s how she looked when I was born. (This is supplanted in my brain from the included photograph, I obviously don’t have a genius infant memory.)

In the dream we were lying in her hospital bed together, the way we did at the beginning of my life and at the end of hers.

She was surrounded by thousands of yellow flowers, and there was a smudge of yellow paint across her left cheek. We were just lying there together talking about everything and nothing. About how much she was going to miss me, what would I wear for my birthday in a month, a poem she’d written recently.

The dream ended abruptly the way they usually do: by crying myself into consciousness, and as the soft haze of yellow and safety evaporated, there was a tangible loss of heat. The warmth of snuggling up next to her had physically slipped into the cold dark air.

There are several different kinds of grief dreams that I’ve encountered over the last year. Three distinct and separate types – all shrill and visceral in their own ways.

There are the reminders.