In 2018 I moved back to Kansas City from the South and I’d like to say KC gave us a warm welcome but it actually looked more like the featured photo on this post. Icy, snowy, and cold. Ok, I’ll admit, also a little magical.

It was the first winter my husband experienced here in Kansas City. He is from an upper East coast city, so snow is not foreign to him but he was surprised and asked if all KC winters were this snowy. I chuckled, definitely not, we just got lucky.

We had just purchased a home and it was within our first week that we were blessed with a blizzard right on our doorstep. This neighborhood is old with most homes settled into their plots for around a century. Most of our power lines are primarily above ground which is fine until it’s not, like during bad storms. We lost power for a solid week because of that snow storm. It stands as the most memorable first few nights of any of my new homes.

Going to bed last night, I was concerned that we might have a repeat of that storm and that I might wake up to chilly temperatures in my own bedroom – shivering with all of my pets covering me like a heavy fur blanket. I was grateful that it wasn’t the case, but for some reason, my heart still felt cold.

I’m not sure why my brain decided to take me on a wild ride through several different dreamscapes last night. Maybe it was taking my medication too late. Or perhaps all the art I was slamming out – the last one, a whimsical page full of whales floating around. I’m not sure what it was, but I dreamt of a many contradictory things and of one person in particular: my brother.

The day he died was a cold day in February. There was still snow on the ground from a few days earlier and more winter weather expected on that day. Winter time, will always be synonymous with his memory.

The imagery from my dreams ranged from, curling irons, wax margaritas, ceramic art, friends, parents, a hotel room, exotic dancers, cooking, the FBI, burying a body, cherry pie and… my brother. Welcome to the mind of a creative person. I’m not going to go into detail, sometimes dreams are too insane to even begin to make sense of them and when they’re like that I tend to focus on the feelings instead. How did the dream make me feel? What was I feeling when a certain person appeared or an event happened?

When I came across my brother he was entering a friend’s house. A couple of women are there, women I don’t recognize. Maybe one was a girl friend but not a steady one. I didn’t trust her that much in this dream which is true of my brother’s last girl friend. I’m assuming my brain inserted this stranger as stand-in for this girl friend whom I only met once before my brother died.

They were cooking, or rather my brother was cooking. He loved to cook, like our mother. He was wearing a white button down t-shirt with thin taupe stripes and white cargo jean shorts. And it was like, I was barely recognized in the room. Like he was living a normal life and I was the dream, the apparition haunting them.

I just watched for a little while, observed. Then I walked behind him, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, and I slowly reached for him. I gently wrapped my arms around him, unsure how he might react. Almost as if I moved too quickly, he’d suddenly disappear, like smoke.

In the dream, it was like he didn’t notice me, or if he did, he didn’t mind because he continued to chop vegetables and chat casually with the ladies in the room.

I remember feeling the soft cool fabric of his polyester shirt, the edges of his sleeves glided across my arms tickling me a little. I could feel the warmth of his body and remember the way he smelled. It was the same smell I remembered from the clothes that I packed away from his closet. I remember wishing I could stay like that forever. I remember wanting to never let go.

At some point he needed to bring some food to the table so he subtlety looked down at me, a side eye, as if acknowledging me for the first time and yet not wanting to let anyone else know that he knew I was there. I let go of him so he could finish his meal and the dream moved on.

I eventually woke up in a warm bed, but there was still a chill in the air that caused my bones to ache and my heart to sink. That transition can feel like falling out of your bed and onto cold concrete. The feeling of comfort and safety, replaced with an icy realization, that it wasn’t real — my brother is gone.

I threw my legs over the side of my bed and attempted to pick my heart up off the floor, stuff it back in my chest, and start the day. I looked outside at all the beautiful white snow accumulating on the tree branches. Puffy birds were still perched and singing. What a beautiful winter scene I thought to myself, but even so, the cold will always be a reminder of what was lost.