The Rooms We Leave Behind

Ten years ago I wrote about you, Mom. Today I’m writing again, on the anniversary of your death but from a different country, a different life.

I don’t know what you’d think of me in Mexico. But I like to imagine you here, sipping café and side-eyeing my musical tastes.

Either way: you’re here.

You left once, and everything shifted. That single door slammed shut, and the silence it left behind has never stopped echoing.

I’ve left a few times now. Cities, countries, versions of myself. Now I’m in Mexico again, unpacking in a new room while still carrying the ones I can’t walk back into.

I’m starting to think that’s what you were really teaching me: how to keep walking out the door even when it hurts.

The first room was the hospital. When you walked out of that room for the last time, I didn’t follow. I stayed behind with the silence, the shock, the weight of a life flipped inside out. No warning, no idea how to get home.

But the night before you died, there was a different kind of silence. I stayed in that room with you, all night, playing your favorite music. The Beatles. Air Supply. Fleetwood Mac. It was like I became the DJ of your last hours on earth. You couldn’t speak, but I felt like we were still having a conversation just in a language only music could carry.

We both knew this was it. And so we just listened. Me in the chair, you in the bed, the songs filling up the room so it wouldn’t feel empty. I’ve carried that night with me ever since, like a secret concert only the two of us attended.

[A tribute video I edited/produced in 2015]

I used to think your death was the end of the lesson. But now I understand: your last act was the beginning of it. You taught me that leaving is inevitable. That doors will close whether we’re ready or not. That the rooms we leave behind will haunt us, shape us, and sometimes save us.

There will be more rooms. Some I’ll choose, some I won’t. One day, someone will write about me the way I write about you. Another door will slam, another echo will live on. But for now, I’m here. In Mexico. In this room. Remembering the ones behind me.

And I think maybe that’s the point: not to stay, but to keep moving.