Cannot sleep to save my life. All night I lay awake, staring into the black bedroom, going over, with sad and wan regret, the missed opportunities and vanished moments of our U.S. sojourn. Wish I’d talked to my nieces and nephew more; I was always on the run, washing dishes or folding laundry, never just stopped myself long enough to focus on them. Did I manage to really touch base with my brothers and sisters-in-law? Did we play enough music, laugh enough, dig enough things all together? Did I manage to communicate how great it feels to be with them and how much I miss them?

I think of my Mom. Of course I worry about her, all alone in that house. Can’t stand the thought of her feeling lonely. She has reserved a space in the New Hampshire retirement community where Pat and Phil Porter live and we face the prospect of her leaving Virginia within the next few years. We all think she’s making a great choice. She loves the Porters and will be a half hour from Ted and Alice in Montpelier, VT. Thing is, DeVonne Dr. is the last place my Dad lived before he got sick. Those backyard trees cradle his memory. In the rooms of that house, I can still feel him. I know he’ll be truly gone when the humble little split-level is empty of us.

The first time I went to see the house it was Dad and me. We drove up from C’Ville on one of those blinding, hazy, late-summer days. The backyard was waist-deep in grass and it was nothing but a jumble of boxes and falling down furniture inside, but my old man was really proud. Was it the first time he and Mom had actually bought a house of their own? I remember he said to me, ”’tain’t much, but it’s mine.” Sad as I was, at the time, to leave C’Ville, I fell in love with DeVonne Dr. that day. Throughout these sleepless jet-lagged nights, I can’t stop thinking of all the sad goodbye’s we have to say; wish it could be somehow easier.