I dreamed of you, after so long.

Not that I don't think of you in my waking hours. For many years I thought of you every day. Now it is 33 years later – 33 years, four months and five days – and I don't think of you every day, but possibly every week. Somewhere along the way they turned from anguished thoughts to cherished memories. 

Already, only three years on, that begins to happen with my thoughts of Andrew, too. So much longer in your case! 

Andrew and I had 20 years. We enjoyed them, in ways great and small. It's not hard to find memories to cherish, alongside those still difficult to contemplate (of his end). You and I had little time or happiness, and the way you ended was horrendous to contemplate. Yet, in our unconsummated love, there were moments of supreme joy.

In the dream we were back in the time when you were alive. You were still there, where we always met – at least I understood it to be that place although it didn't look the same. It looked symbolically the same, though, with dark tunnels, cave-like, infiltrated by mist. I was trying to sneak in undetected. I wasn't alone; one or two unidentified others were with me. Colleagues, perhaps, as in the old days. I seemed to know them, just wasn't focused on them. I was trying to find you, and I knew you were looking for me too. But we had to be secret.

There were flames somewhere in the background – part of the place on fire? 

We encountered each other suddenly, at a bend where two tunnels met. We had time to kiss each other hastily, awkwardly, on cheeks not lips, and mutter our love, unnoticed in the darkness; then people came and pulled us apart and hurried us away, you towards the interior and the flames, me in the other direction.

I can read the dream. It's a perfect metaphorical description of what did happen.

Did I wake up crying? I don't know; it was a few nights ago. There are tears now.