she had been trying to show me from the moment I saw my name above the door.
Nothing in my life had been erased.
Nothing had been dismissed.
The years I spent staying, choosing, sacrificing, and loving had not led me to the edge of usefulness.
They had become the foundation for something larger than either of us could have built alone.
And when I lock my apartment door at night and hear laughter rising from the kitchen below, I no longer think of the word burden.
I think of home.
And I know, with a peace I once thought old age had taken from me forever, that I was never being left behind at all.