I love you like I’ve never loved any structure in my entire life. Actually, I don't think I do love any other structure. I stand in awe in front of the Colosseum and am charmed by the row houses in Savannah and Boston and London, but I have never before or since loved a building made up of four walls and a roof like I love you.
You were our place of everything.
Our place of celebration in the joyful times - on birthdays and graduations and random evenings in the hot Texas summers, our place of refuge when the storms hit - and damn did they hit, our place of peace amidst our broken lives around us, our place of the most precious and priceless and treasured memories.
The place where the things we love most about our lives together took place - Zach sneaking out of the front door in the middle of the night to run to his car in the driveway, the few feet that separated Zach and I from each other for years, the comforting yellow walls of my wildly decorated bedroom, the sounds of Zach on the phone late at night coming from down the hall, the computer room where I can still hear him yelling at me for eating over the keyboard and getting it greasy, the pool where we swam like fish and played like kids, the garden out back where I can close my eyes anywhere in this world and instantly see mom kneeling in the flower beds, working away peacefully and fruitfully, the back windows that always scared me at night if mom and dad weren't there, the place where I first got the news that broke our family of four apart, and the place that gracefully and graciously let us all quickly fall apart and slowly put ourselves back together again.
Your walls contain my entire life. You will forever be my favorite home, my favorite refuge, my favorite keeper of my favorite memories.
Thank you, and I love you so, so, so very much.