The other night I had a dream about my friend Doug, who died in the World Trade Center.

I have this close group of friends from college. We all lived in the same dorm for two years, and we’re still close today, even though we’re scattered across the country now (and one’s in China). Most are married, a few are not, most are working, one’s getting an MBA. Doug was among these friends.

In the dream, I was living in this big apartment, and I had my group of college friends over for some sort of party. Doug was there, too, and I was surprised to see him. He was incorporeal; he looked and sounded just like Doug, but he had no physical substance, just like a ghost. Other than that, he was the same old Doug, just one of the guys, standing around and schmoozing as gregariously and happily as he always had.

He talked about all the travelling he’d done since he’d died. He pretty much floated around the world now, from place to place, and he was privy to people’s thoughts and dreams in a way that ordinary human beings are not. He’d seen so many people and places. It sounded like he was on a great adventure.

He seemed so present.

I don’t know why I dreamed about him; I hadn’t been thinking much about him lately. But I don’t think I’ve ever fully been able to wrap my mind around his death. Part of me feels like he’s spending a couple of years abroad, in Madagascar or something, and just doesn’t have e-mail access. We human beings rely on sensory perception, on tangibility; absence is cognitively hard to grasp.

He was 27 years old, and he’d gone into work that morning just like he always did. And then he was gone. I don’t get it.