I remember the drive, racing in the car, trying to beat my cousins to the lake. I remember trying to follow the speed limit—but sometimes the road-signs didn’t exactly match the number on my speedometer. I remember blasting the radio and singing with my sister at the top of our lungs. Eventually, we made it to the lake, laughter and loud music filled the air. We bounded down the steps and raced into the kitchen, almost as if we had teleported there. 

“Who’s got the drinks?” Someone asked.

Carefully, I displayed a walgreens bag filled to the brim with apricot nectars, a drink that had once been commonplace in our grandmother’s home. All seventeen of us grabbed a cold drink and opened it. Pop. We each clinked our tin cans of juice and collectively dedicated the cheers, “To Mom!”

This is it, I remember thinking, my heart heavy. This is really it.

There was a different type of energy filling the room that night, one that I will never forget. Of course there was a somberness that lingered, but there was almost a relief. A relief in knowing that Mom was no longer in pain. A relief that Mom was with Pop again. A relief that we all had each other.

As we all smiled and sipped our juice, remembering our grandmother, a familiar song began to play on the speakers. 

“Turn it up!” Someone shouted, saying what we were all thinking. It was as if a switch had been flipped in all of us. 

Now, our family had many songs that we liked to listen to together, but this had never been one of them. It was a strange uniting light in the darkness; we all knew every lyric and sang them with all our hearts. 

“Drench yourself in words unspoken, live your life with arms wide open, today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten.” 

And it was true. We didn’t know what our next chapters in our lives would be (without Mom) but we were together, and that’s all that mattered.