The song “Beneath My Skin” by Jerry’s Sound Room has been circling my head for days now—largely because it’s on repeat on my iPhone. I play it several times a day: first thing in the morning, while I make the bed, on the drive to exercise class, and again on the way home. I tell myself it would be the perfect anthem if I smoked cigarettes and drank gin. Certain lyrics land with particular force: “I can’t unlove where you’ve been,” and “the place where your touch begins even when the light comes in.”
I don’t know what place the composer had in mind, but for me, that place is our house. I can’t unlove our house.
Over the past three years, I’ve been asked—more times than I can count—when I’m going to sell it, or when I’ll move somewhere new. My answer is always the same: And then where would I live? The question is annoying, and frankly, it’s nobody’s business. This isn’t just a piece of real estate. It isn’t simply four walls and a roof over my head. It is so much more than that—so layered with memory, presence, and touch—that I don’t think people who haven’t lived this kind of loss can fully understand what it means to stay. I read somewhere that home is not a place, it’s moment. It’s complicated.
And so if you are reading this, I ask that you don’t ask me when I will leave. I can’t unlove where I’ve been. This house still knows us, and for now, it still knows me.