I wrote a story about my mom once called Sipping Coffee. It was a Mother's Day gift for an online publication and inexplicably got picked up by a publishing house to print in a critical thinking textbook for students. The main image throughout was my mom sitting in the kitchen of my childhood home, drinking her favorite beverage, and how welcoming and stable that made me feel. So, to return to that house this week, walk up those stairs, and see my husband, John, in that very kitchen was something I can hardly explain. The circumstances of my return to my childhood home were not joyful, as I returned to help with the arrangements as my father followed my mom in everlasting rest.

My mom was 86 and my dad 93, and both lived a long, full life in that house with the treacherous winding staircase to where I grew up. It took a long time for me to travel back there and see the final resting place of my mother. It was something I had avoided until I absolutely had to look at her name engraved on the stone. When I paid my respects, I drove back to the house, opened the front door, and made my way up the carpeted staircase. Then, as I rounded the corner, there was John, sitting at the kitchen table, sipping his coffee and reading his phone. How do I explain what that moment in time was like? He was in the chair where I had sat as a kid, directly across from the spot where Rosemarie had been for so long. It was surreal and comforting all at the same time.

Five years ago, I left this house in a state of shock. My anchor was gone. I could feel my world seismically shift, and I didn't know where I was headed. I only knew I had to escape this house. I had to go down those stairs and back to California—away from the memories. I sat on the front porch, shaking, wanting to get to the airport as fast as possible. I shook my father's hand, both of us knowing we would talk but realizing that this was the last time that we'd see each other. Through our letter writing, our relationship had grown better over the years. We were finally on the same page, but the chapters were very different from those of my mother. This was the house where my brother and I would race to the living room on Christmas Day, the house that was my shelter, long before social media, from the bullies at school, the house where we played board games and bobbed for apples on Halloween, and the house that I left to move to California. It was the place I returned in summers to pick my mom up on our trips to Europe, and it was where I had to pick out her favorite outfit to clothe her when she left this world. Five years later, I had returned to see John sitting in the very room where so many good memories existed. It was as if he had been here all along—it felt that right.

My friend told me once that I had so much love for my mother that there was no room in my heart for anyone else. It was because she left that I allowed myself to open up the possibilities. And right on time, out stepped a Texan, not one year later, to verify that very fact. I tried to describe the house to John so many times, but I think finally seeing it and living there for one week made him see a part of me that he probably was never able to fully comprehend. I think it made clear my desire to have my own space for so many years, the reason I don't collect trinkets and save papers, books, games, and more.

This time, I didn't run from the house. As the moment of our departure arrived, I walked the two bedroom, one bathroom flat. I could see my younger self in every room. I could see my dad going down the stairs for his night shift at the Post Office, our dinners at the very table where John was now sitting, and I could see me and my mom quietly sitting in the den. I even saw our cat, Cesa, and our insane dog, Blitz, running from room to room. There were always good times in this house. I've opened and closed so many chapters in my life, but the one that seemed to remain ajar was my time in Medford. I knew the only way it would close would be when time caught up to my parents. But what a gift it was to see my new chapter in the very spot where there were so many good ones.