My friend called me today and discovered that you had died.  Every time I have to tell someone, it’s like you just died all over again.  She said that I was not to feel guilt over anything, because that’s common and she knows I did nothing wrong. (Of course I don’t agree.  I won’t ask if you do, I’m sure you’d find something wrong with my care of you those last 9 months.)  I said I feel guilt because I sometimes think I traded my mother for a new house, because it was my inheritance from you that I used for the down payment.  And she said, “Your mother was leaving. She was never going to stay.  You don’t think she is happy you live in a beautiful house now, and her gift enabled that?”

I hope you see it that way.  I hope you don’t think “Shit, I was barely cold and she made an offer on that house.”  Yes, the house I love, and you loved, with the woods and the deer in the yard, and the apple tree and the grape vines.  I wish you could have lived in it with me for your last few weeks, looking out the window at the deer eating all my apples.