It is a little funny and a little sad the way presence makes itself felt most poignantly through absence.

This house embraces you even when you are gone. It fights to let you go. It clutches tenaciously at a stray memory and presents it to me like a gift. Like cats that drag in half-dead mice to deposit proudly at your feet as if to say, “For you. Look.” This house is like that. Like a cat.

This hollowed, brick-mortar structure comes alive when you are here then descends into a gentle silence enveloping the absence. How it extends itself in generosities, unfurling its warmth like a scented flower. It chooses you as I chose you.

Here, in this house the living haunt the living and may it always be so. May part of you always remain here with me in a space that is no less than an island; a space so clearly, so undilutedly ours.