In Heaven, Everything Is Fine
The house on Durant Avenue was one of those generic postwar brick bungalows, but to me, it was home. It had cheerful flower boxes in the windows that my mother had painted herself and smooth concrete steps leading to the forest green front door. On my computer screen, the house looked the same as it did in my memory, if somewhat pixelated. And just as they often do in my memory, my dead mom and dead dad sat on the porch, holding hands.
Five hundred miles away from the street I grew up on, I was getting my MFA in Creative Writing in Amherst. I hadn’t seen the house in months; not since the winter they both passed.
Mom slipped on the ice on the front steps, even though Dad made sure they were as heavily salted as every meal she had ever made for us. Surgery w
