The quote I wanted to use but it just didn’t seem right is, The Kitchen is the heart of the home. In every home I have lived in from my childhood home to my current and every one in between, what a true statement. Today, my kitchen, what was once the heart of my home will begin a transformation. While not a full re-model, the kitchen is getting a facelift. Something that is needed now that the rest of the home has been taken from fully handicap friendly to one that is not. While, I kept components of the some of the changes we did to the home, you could say the house is now more perfectly suited for “aging in place” rather than one for someone that was wheelchair friendly. The kitchen now looks out of place with the changes to the rest of the home, which is why the facelift.

Like so many times before, I have overestimated how I would handle things. The excitement of the changes and anticipation of having the house feel calm and peaceful has not allowed me to think about what changing the kitchen truly means to me. That is until about 3:30 a.m. this morning. I tease that Captain Cortisol wakes me around 3-4 am many mornings, but this morning I think it had more to do with being anxious about the start of demolition. As I walked into the kitchen so very early this morning to grab a drink of water, I stood in the mostly empty, packed up kitchen and felt the waves of memories hit me.

We moved in to our home in 2008. Our neighborhood was very small at the time, maybe a dozen or so homes. There were families with kids around Trey’s age and so we began a new season of our lives together. Tom was working and moving through the ranks of TDCJ, I was consulting part-time and being the stay-at-home mom I wanted to be. There were school activities, after-school activities, weekend Bar-B-Q’s and outdoor movie nights. All of which started in the kitchen.

That’s where Tom and I hung out and planned our week. It’s where impromptu outdoor movie nights were decided. The kitchen table is where we helped Trey with homework or where Tom and I would just sit and talk after dinner while Trey was in his room playing legos. The kitchen is where Tom would sneak up behind me and give me big, amazing hugs or a kiss on the neck as I made dinner. The kitchen sink is where I would slap Tom’s butt as he did the dishes, you know, to give him a taste of his own medicine. The kitchen has kept secrets, heard laughter and felt the tears of hard times. The kitchen was witness to fellowship with friends and the love between two people. It was where Tom and I taught Trey how to cook and just off the kitchen in the backyard, Tom taught Trey how to grill. Tom and I were always a team, and the kitchen let us trade who was captain of the team. On weekends, he was, it was the grill master’s domain and I was the sous-chef. On the weekdays, I was the master of the kitchen and Tom was my sous-chef.

It was in the corner of the kitchen in January 2016, while Trey was being tutored in Math in our dining room, that Tom grabbed me , pulled me close and told me in a whisper about his appointment to the neurologist he had that afternoon. He told me, how the Doctor believed his left hand weakness was probably not carpal tunnel syndrome that it could be a something else. On that night, in a whisper, that corner of the kitchen was the beginning of our ALS journey.

The kitchen was where we learned to cook differently to accommodate Tom’s changing needs. It’s where I would make batches of different meals, blend and freeze them so we could use them with Tom’s feeding tube. It was the kitchen that instead of fellowship with friends, it was where nurses and caregivers went for Tom’s medication. It was that same corner of the kitchen that I would stand and cry as the disease progressed and it was in that kitchen, I stood alone after my husband died in shock and the heaviest of grief as I realized, he was gone. The love and laughter that once flowed in the kithen was replaced with anxiety, fear and lots of crying. The kitchen was just another room in the house.

The changes to the kitchen are cosmetic and I know they can’t erase the memories, but this morning, it was all I could do to not have that fear along with the emotions the memories stirred in me. Since Tom’s death, I have tried to find my way back to cooking and re-creating the heart of our home. It’s just not the same right now. I don’t really find the joy in cooking like I once did. I am working on that. Actually, tonight I am off to a Thai cooking class with my bestie. Maybe this will spark something in me. My hopes are that the updated kitchen will do the same. Help me find my way back to enjoying creating happy memories, like laughing and dancing, fellowship with friends and ultimately bringing the kitchen back to the heart of the home.

All my love,

Lara