The kitchen had yellowed vinyl flooring that my mother always meant to replace, and the upstairs bathroom door always stuck when the weather became humid.
It was not a fancy house by any means, but it was the only place that truly felt like home to me.
My father worked in an office for most of his life and my mother did too, so while we were not poor, every dollar we had was given a specific job.
My brother moved across the country for work years ago, which meant I was the one who checked the furnace filter and noticed when my father began looking older.
Then one winter afternoon, my father died quite suddenly in a crash on an icy road while he was driving home from the store.
The doctor’s mouth kept moving while my mind stalled out somewhere between hearing about the accident and the finality of his passing.
My father was only sixty eight years old and he was supposed to have so much more time with us.
My mother folded in on herself after that happened, and she would sit at the kitchen table with a cold mug of tea while staring at his empty chair.
She stopped finishing her meals and eventually stopped starting them at all because she said food felt heavy in her throat.