This is the house that I lived in during my senior year at Marist College. I loved this house. For about five or six years we passed it down within my sorority and despite the fact that it wasn’t the newest or fanciest house, it always felt like home. My girls and I looked forward to inheriting it from our friends and I always had a place to crash while visiting after graduation. The porch was a favorite place to sit and smoke cigarettes and and gossip. There was a door that connected my bedroom with my best friend’s bedroom, and we used to leave the door open at night sometimes to talk while we fell asleep. 

Oh, the things that these walls saw! Laughter, tears, parties, sorority rituals, hungover Sex and the City marathons, weak attempts at home-cooked meals, growth. I remember finding out that my sister was getting married during a beach themed party we were throwing; I stood up on the table and screamed it out to all of our guest and they cheered and cheered! I entertained my now husband, then ‘best friend’, who came to visit during the 2004 Yankee Playoffs. I found out that a dear friend, so close to me, was no longer in remission and fighting his ultimately losing battle against leukemia again while sitting on that porch. The relationships that I had (thankfully in most cases still have) with the girls that I shared that home with enriched my life so much and I’m so grateful to have these memories to carry with me. 

I’ve been thinking about this house and that time in my life so much this past week. I hope that these girls, who were lost too soon, managed to experience the love and feeling and emotion that I did and that their friends and family find some peace in the memories that remain.