I didn’t leave with raised voices or shattered dishes. There was no dramatic confrontation, no note left on the counter explaining myself. I simply disappeared from a life that had learned to use me as furniture—useful, silent, and easily ignored. Drama requires witnesses, and for years I had been performing for people who stopped seeing me long ago.

To understand why I walked away, you have to understand the water.

It happened two weeks before I left. August 14th. The heat in Illinois was unbearable, thick and wet, pressing down like a punishment. My grandson Evan, twenty-one and indefinitely “between majors,” had decided to host friends on the back deck.

“Grandma,” he said, eyes glued to his phone, “the boat seats are gross. Can you wipe them down? The guys are coming over.”

It wasn’t a request. It never was. My arthritis was screaming that day, my joints swollen from the humidity, but that didn’t matter. In that house, my role was maintenance.

maintenance.

I carried a bucket down to the dock. The boards were slick with algae. I’d asked my son Richard—three times that month—to clean them.

“I’ll get to it,” he’d said each time, pouring another drink. “Stop nagging.”