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Sometimes when the mercy of sleep comes, Alisa Clamen dreams about her missing son. It’s not a specific dream, but “mostly the comfort of his presence, seeing him, hearing his voice — just a feeling that he is with me.”

In the dreaming, at least, she finds a reprieve from “the constant aching void that I feel for him every waking minute.”

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These are unsmiling times for the 53-year-old Montrealer, and today is a grim anniversary: Clamen last heard from her son, Jesse Galganov, on Sept. 28, 2017.

It was four days after she’d driven him to the airport to board a flight for Peru and the start of what was to be an eight-month travel adventure in South America and Asia. He was 22 and set to start medical school in Philadelphia in July.

He texted her on the 28th to say he loved her and that he’d be out of touch for four days as he hiked the Santa Cruz trail, which cuts through the world’s highest tropical mountain range.