…”Mom, I’m home. Leave the porch light on.” I read it four times. Then I picked up another. “Mom, I fed the cat.” Another. “Mom, I’m sorry I didn’t call more.” Forty notes. Every one addressed to my mother. My mother, who died in September. My mother, who lived in Linda’s house for thirty-one years before she sold it and moved into the home where she passed.
Linda stopped backing toward the door. She looked at the notes, then at me, and her face changed completely. “This was your mother’s house?” she whispered. I nodded. I hadn’t told her. I’d moved onto this street in August to be near Mom’s old neighborhood, the way you move closer to a fire to stay warm.
I made an appointment with a sleep doctor that afternoon. He watched the doorbell clips with me in his office. “Grief sleepwalking,” he said gently. “It’s more common than people think. Your body is going home, even if you won’t let yourself.” He gave me medication, a door alarm, and the name of a grief counselor. He also told me to stop pretending I was fine.
I went back to Linda’s to apologize. She opened the door before I could knock. She had a cup of tea ready on the porch, and she’d tied the forty notes together with a ribbon. “I’d like you to keep these,” she said. “But I think you should read them again when you’re ready. Some of them are lovely.”
Then she pointed up. The porch light was on. In the middle of the day.
“I’m leaving it on from now on,” Linda said. “It’s a good light. Your mother picked it.” She looked at me kindly. “And if you come at 2 a.m., honey, just knock. I’ll make tea.”
The sleepwalking stopped in December. I still stop by Linda’s on Sunday afternoons. The porch light is always on. Last week I left a note on her fence on purpose, in daylight, fully awake. It said: “Thank you for keeping her light on.”
