Then I reached for the serving bowl.
“Who wants more potatoes?”
Every hand around the table went up.
Laughter filled the kitchen.
And for the first time since Peter died, I didn’t feel as though I was trying to recreate a life that had ended.
I was living the one still waiting for me.
In the house that was mine.
At the table that held my family’s history.
Surrounded by people who understood that love was something we offered freely, never something we used to take away another person’s dignity.
Outside, the first snowflakes began to fall.
Inside, the candles burned steadily.
And at sixty-eight years old, I finally understood that the most beautiful chapter of my life had not been taken from me.
It was only just beginning.
