Chris said I was talking in my sleep last night. I dreamt that my mom called a week before Thanksgiving to tell me that my brother decided to finally finish college and get his BA, and he got accepted at some school in Boston. I asked her why no one told me anything; obviously, if you start school here, you can’t just randomly start in November. She said she just forgot to tell me, and Ed probably was so busy studying that he forgot he just relocated across the country and didn’t realize his sister needed to know immediately.

“He doesn’t have anyone to spend Thanksgiving with,” she said. She explained she was concerned that he might harm himself if he got too lonely, and so she told me she wanted Chris and me to bring him to Portugal with us.

I was really confused.

“He’s not even alive! How can we bring him to Portugal?! How can he possibly be studying in Boston??” I exclaimed back to her. I had no idea what was going on.

“You need to buy him a plane ticket to Portugal,” she insisted. “Who else does he have nearby? You have to take care of your brother. He’s your blood.”

What is reality, and what is a dream? I had no idea what was real and what was imagined in my subconscious. All I felt was confusion. But a part of me felt happy at the possibility that the last five years had been imagined, that Ed could really be alive, and that I could actually bring him to Europe. It certainly would not be part of the original plan, but who the hell would care if it meant he was alive.

But then I woke up, and he was still dead. Again, it’s just a dream that he’s still alive.