JUST LIFE AS IT COMES

 No More Chapters 

Just Life as It Comes

(Epilogue: Still Coming Home)

There comes a point where stories stop needing numbers.

Grief doesn’t stay neatly filed between beginnings and endings; it just folds itself into ordinary days. Like today, when I 

went back to Mom’s house.

It’s been a month since I last stepped inside. 

Dust had gathered in corners, and the house was not in its best. 

Silence seemed to cling to the walls. 

I brought a maid along, and together we began what I call half-baked cleaning; you know, the kind that’s equal parts dusting and remembering?

At one point, my hands found the photo 

of Mom on the wall. I traced her face with my fingertips, the curve of her smile, the softness around her eyes. 

The moment cracked something open. I found myself talking to her, apologizing for so many things; for not keeping the house the way she would have liked, for letting time slip by too quickly.

Later, I spoke with my nephew on the phone, about the house, about family, about preparing for her one-year death anniversary. He listened quietly as my voice trembled. I told him about the price of caring too much, of trying to hold together pieces that were never mine alone to mend.

The maid heard me crying. She didn’t 

say much; just kept working, quietly wiping surfaces as if cleaning could somehow soften grief. Maybe it does, 

in small ways.

There’s still more to do ie the upstairs waits for Tuesday. 

But tonight, I’m sitting with the ache and the gratitude, both. Maybe healing is a kind of half-baked cleaning too, something you return to again and again, until the dust finally settles around the love that remains.

By the time I locked the doors, 9 hours later, I wasn’t sure if we had cleaned the house or if the house had quietly begun to clean me.

Mom felt near, like the hum of light just before sunset; present, unseen.

Maybe this, too, is coming home.

Yet, 

Still learning how to come home.

Pause and breathe, what stirred within you? 

Notes/What I felt:

Healing doesn’t follow a timeline.

Grief can hide in everyday chores.

Sometimes, wiping dust is a way of 

saying I still care.

Love remains, even when everything 

else changes.

Coming home is not a destination; 

it’s  a feeling we return to, over and over.