Dear Kay,

We bought a house today.  

It’s small and quiet, tucked on grandma’s street where the wind still carries the smell of lilacs in spring. From the front porch, I can see her house, the one that always wrapped us all in warmth and noise and the clatter of too many voices talking over one another. It’s strange to write this and not hear your voice arguing for the last piece of cake or skipping down that walkway barefoot, sunshine tangled in your hair.  

This house is meant to be a second home. A place for holidays and long weekends, lazy summers and full tables. A place where your brother and sister can bring their children someday. A place where we can all be together.  

Except, not all of us.

When they accepted our offer, I reached for the phone without thinking. I wanted to tell you first. I could already hear your excited laugh in my head, the way it bubbled out of you like a secret you couldn’t wait to share. That sound came rushing back with such force it knocked the air out of me.  

I cried in the hallway, the ink barely dry on the papers.

This place was supposed to bring us closer again, supposed to feel like coming home. But love without your presence is heavy. Like wading through a dream that keeps turning into a nightmare. I need you here. I ache for one of your hugs more than I know how to explain.    

Why did you have to go?  

No answer will ever come. No sentence eases the hollow that keeps stretching out inside my chest. I keep thinking if I could just do everything I should have before, maybe you’d come back for a second. Maybe I’d feel you in the doorway of the new house, grinning the way you used to when you had a secret or a plan. But the walls are too quiet. Everyone’s laughter is thinner.

I got this house for our family. A place to gather. A place to just be together again.

But without you, it will never be whole.  

There is a piece of my heart I can’t find anymore. It was yours. It still is. And always will be for all the years I’ll be forced to live without you and beyond.

I love you always,

Mommy