It doesn't have to be a nightmare to suck.

Dear Baby,

I had another dream about O. Well, it was tangentially about him. I dreamt that the other kitties, K in particular, asked me where he was. She asked me (in English - that, however, was not strange to me in dreamland) why he hadn't come home yet.

I couldn't even type that sentence without crying.

I miss him so much, kid. I want to paint the inside of the house, but I can't even think about painting the living room - the one room in the house that desperately needs it - because I can't bear the thought of painting over the scratches he left on the walls climbing up on the window sill. (He was a lazy jumper.)

When he died, we had him cremated and we have his ashes in a little box with his name on it. At the time, I couldn't stand thinking that when we left this house we'd be leaving him behind. I wanted to bury him at our forever home, not at our starter home. We're leaving this place in the foreseeable future and I couldn't leave him behind. He was so important to us, kid, and I couldn't leave him behind.

But now I have a little box of ashes and his collar and that's all that's left of him. And I wonder if leaving him at the vet to be cremated that day was the right thing to do. I feel like we left him alone and now I have this little box staring at me and I don't know what to do with it. I figured I'd bury it when we got to our forever home, but now I wonder if burying him here wouldn't have been easier. In the sense that I could have said goodbye instead of wondering if all those horrible stories about mix-ups and swindles at cremation places are true. Now I know exactly where I would have buried him in our yard, and I would have planted a tree over him. But I still wouldn't have wanted to leave him behind when we left. I dunno, kid. It's feeling a little like "damned if you do, damned if you don't" right now.

I asked your Dad if he ever dreams about O. He didn't think so, but he never remembers his dreams anyway. I think we need a new category for dreams. We have dreams and nightmares, and nightmares are pretty well defined. But what about the dreams that are so heart achingly sad that you don't want to wake up from them and when you do you just cry all day? Nightbreaks? So-horrifically-sad-I'm-in-physical-pain? For-the-love-of-god-why-can't-I-forget-my-dreams-like-every-other-normal-person? Let me know if you have any ideas.

In the mean time, I'm trying the "stay up super late until I'm so exhausted I can't think straight" method for avoiding bad dreams. I can't muster up the energy for positive thoughts before bed, so that's gonna have to be my go-to for a while.

Love you, kid.
-Mama