He finally got it.  After all these years he understood. My husband had gone from totally frustrated to tolerant to sometimes thankful, and now, finally, years later, an epiphany reached his heart. This is why I take so many (like so so so many) pictures: it can all change so quickly. Yesterday can be a chapter suddenly closed. And you want to remember the details you might otherwise regretfully forget, even feel lost from to not remember. After fourteen years of seeing me hold a camera all the time, my husband now empathetically understood the why.

I couldn’t even look at these images for almost six weeks after taking the pictures. The week we left our magical street was a week blurred with with tears and a crazy amount of logistics, and seeing these pictures brings the saline and snot saturated face right back again. Well, actually, that hasn’t really stopped. I don’t know how long it will take to just settle into the “happy memory” phase, but I’m definitely not there yet. I’m still in the “I-can-ugly-cry-about-this-yet-again” phase. All this heartache from just two years (well, technically the girls and I were one week short of two years, but Brian was 2 years, to the day.)

So this is going to be my attempt to forego a therapy bill. I don’t know if it will work, but I’ll try. I’m going to share what we left behind– which is a lot of “who” that make up the weight of the “what.” I’m going to share our road trip across the country. I’m going to go through my pictures and be okay with an ugly cry. Maybe I’ll even find that the ugly cry yields a beautiful joy. I don’t know if it will on this part of the journey, but I’m inviting you to come along all the same and share it with me.

Last week, my brother called to check in on me. I started to cry (yes, total theme!) when talking about how I ached for some of my friends and life in Georgia. He shared his experience and used the word “irreplaceable” to describe people he had said goodbye to on a move his family did. And it stuck.

We’re in a new land now, from a mountain to an island, and we’ll forge forward to find community again; but I’m quite at peace to know that who and what we left behind is indeed irreplaceable. I’m truly thankful that my children have the Lookout Mountain chapter of their childhood. And I’m content knowing that this street, as pictured from just outside our home, will always hold a part of my heart. I’m actually quite thankful I left some of me there, even though it aches in the depths of me for now.