“Why are you up this early?” I said realizing it must have only just passed six in the morning.

“I had a weird dream,” he said in a sleepy tone.

“Oh yeah? What was weird about it?” I asked with a bit of sarcasm.

“I dreamed that we were back at home. No one was dead and mom was alive. We were all sitting around laughing and telling jokes,” he said sounding a bit far off.

“That sounds like a good dream to me,” I said a bit confused.

“It wasn’t about what was in the dream. It was about the feeling,” he said looking at me.

“What do you mean?” I asked even more confused.

“You know how when you have dreams you feel things?” he asked.

“You mean like fear, or angry?” I asked him still not getting his meaning.

“Yeah like those, only in this dream I didn’t have a feeling. It wasn’t scary, sad, or happy. In this dream I forgot how I was supposed to feel,” he answered getting quiet. I sat and thought about what Max said. He was only thirteen. Our mom died early on from his eleventh year. She had an overdose of medication and alcohol.

The more I thought the more I realized why he felt weird. Our mom had never been a stable woman. She had her ups and downs. Sometimes she was a super mom who was fun and caring, other days she never left her room or spent her time either at the bar or off somewhere for days at a time. She spent over half of his childhood on an emotional roller coaster. He never really got to know the real her like I did.

I finally decided to say something after a few long silent minutes, “Max, it isn’t your fault that you don’t know how to feel towards Mom. She got sick and didn’t know how to handle herself,” I said wrapping my arm around him.

“If it’s not my fault, and it’s not hers how am I supposed to see her?” he asked looking at me.

That question was harder to answer. I thought for a few short minutes until I looked how I thought of our mom, “Max, think of your favorite memory of Mom,” I said.

“You have it?” I said after waiting a few seconds.

He nodded.

“Now how do you feel about that memory?” I asked.

“I feel happy,” he said sounding like he didn’t catch my drift.

“Whenever you don’t know how to think of Mom, think of how you feel about that memory. That will be your basis on how you see Mom,” I explained. My brother’s eyes widened. He finally understood what I was saying. He smiled and hugged me.

“Thanks Sophiene,” he said and we sat in silence looking at the landscape before us. It really was beautiful. The sun was now over the tree line and it seemed like all at once every creature was now awake and moving about. In a passing thought my mind went back to wandering about what the maker of all that movement at the base of the cliff might be.