“Two years ago, I woke up around 1:00 AM thinking, “I can never go home again.” It was the most intense sense of homesickness I’ve ever experienced, full of panic and regret. I tried to calm myself down – logically, of course, I could. My parents lived just a couple hours away, still in my childhood home. I’d fought hard to get away from the suburb I grew up in, so why this sudden intense longing?

The next day, I got a call that my dad had been hospitalized during the night and was in the ICU. He didn’t make it out. And while the house is still there, it’s not home anymore.”