Sometimes I have dreams I can’t explain. They usually involve vast winter landscapes – white in every­ ­direction. There aren’t penguins or polar bears (I’m not a child anymore); instead there are half-filled footprints and paths that lead nowhere.

Most of the time, he is there. We walk along one of the paths together, pointing with gloveless hands at things in the distance – trees and bushes with berries. Tiny animals too.

Twice, he brought ice skates. The first time, we went to a pond and I stared into the ice at the fish frozen there. Their colors were amazingly vibrant, like flowers in springtime or brand-new cars. They were orange and red and yellow. I wanted to see them swim. Distracted, I barely noticed the sound of his skates on the ice as he traced figure eights. When he noticed my inattention, he laughed and sent me home. Said he had to practice some more. Alone. Said I’d get hurt if I stayed.

The second time he brought skates I gave him some coffee (for concentration, I said), and we laughed the ­entire time we walked on the path to the pond. When we got there, he told me I could make snow angels while he skated. I agreed it would be fun, and when we finished that day, I was soaked with melted snow.

See, the worst part about a regular nice dream is waking up from it. But when you have a dream that keeps coming back, it’s heartbreaking to ­realize that, sometime, it will stop.

He stayed in my dreams for nearly a month, and always, I wished it was winter. I’d close my eyes and think of him and smile, and things would go smoothly in dreamland. Then after a while, when I dreamt, my snow angels were falling on top of each other and his figure eights were cutting too close to the edge of the pond. And then, finally, the white winter world crumbled away.

And then, nothing.

Now I sit and stare at my ceiling, wondering why it reminds me of snow.