I don't dream about him I dream about his brother. I think he wants privacy and is hiding himself away from dreams that may be had of him. It's possible he's not entirely comfortable by what he left behind is doing his usual - licking his wounds by himself & wanting everyone to leave him alone.
His brother, who is alive, on the other hand comes around often in dreams. Usually I'm a bartender and he's leaning into the bar waiting for me to reach his side of the line. I'm going as fast as I can but can't get to him, people keep butting in the middle of the line & the music's too loud for them to hear me telling them off for it. He eventually circles around a bit anxious and needing the conversation he came for. It's not about drinks at this bar. People are purchasing words with their money. Customers are getting upset and wanting their money back because the words I'm selling them are flat & stale like 5 year old cases of frosty Frog. It's true, I'm serving them vague and hollow one liners, sidetracked by all of the things I have to say to him. Everything I have to say is to him & it's driving me crazy that I can't get to him. My ears become less & less able to hear in cacophony of this word bar. I see through & past everybody to where he is standing at all times. He looks like something is missing, and of course, something is.
There's that saying "life is for the living" which doesn't at all take into account the power of the dead.

I think it's a good thing I didn't love him as much as I could have. I think it's a good thing the way he clamoured around in my mind for so many years. I'm not so sure it's a good thing the way I try to drive him out of my consciousness still angry and still forgiving him piece by piece for changing everything and for things he said in his last words home that are too much to know he had to walk around feeling.
My whole neighborhood where we grew up back home has become a wierd and sad place. It's like an old village after a plague. There may as well be a big gravestone entranceway. It's no longer "this is where we grew up" It's this is where dreams of what life could be occurred and it's no longer sweet memories, it's all tainted and sordid and aching. All the old friends don't commune there anymore. We used to on purpose. Laughing at ourselves for ways we used to be. Now we meet in little groups outside of the homebase and avoid being together at all in that particular place. it's like we failed en masse and we don't want to have to look at that. He brought an irony into the picture. And even though you couldn't name any of us innocent even then, his pain overshadows any returning to any innocence that might have been.

Mamma said, "Your problem is you're always putting everything into everybody else. Spending all your skills making other people alright, organizing futures & successes for people who may or may not even care when you get right down to it or a few yards past it... you never capitolize on yourself, someday your going to turn around and say, "look at what all my skills got everybody' and all you'll be is worn to the bone... all your talent just dripping away like you think this world lasts forever..."
THen she sucks back the blood from where she bit her tongue and spits it to the side. Doesn't matter, I heard what she was gonna say anyway, she was goinna say "before it's too late..." Well don't you dare Mamma because that CRACK! when I heard you anyway was my neck snapping back to all that's been and snapping back to front and centre and you always like to leave me on the edge like this anyway... like tommorrow doesn't have anything to do with right here & right now.
So I know what everything behind me looks like & if I squint hard enough a little focus comes in, like a 3D picture on a cereal box.
She's talking about herself. She's talking about her time to see me be what I can be running out, not my time to see it. She knows I'll see it. She's talking about herself & asking me to put as much into being successful with her, in her terms.
I hear ya mamma, loud and clear, bloody tongue or no.