The days blurred together. Hospice nurses came and went. We adjusted medications. We played old movies on her laptop because she liked the noise and we sat in silence when words felt like too much. I read to her from a paperback western she loved doing all the voices and she smiled even when I knew she was too tired to follow the plot. My mom made soup that nobody ate and my aunt brought ice chips. I learned to give morphine doses and check oxygen levels and stay calm when her breathing got ragged and uneven, even though inside I was screaming.
One afternoon, she asked me to open the blinds all the way so she could see the sky. It was overcast, nothing special, but she stared at it like it was the most beautiful thing in the world. "I'm ready," she said quietly. Not to me, just out loud, and I knew what she meant.
She died 3 days later, early in the morning, when the world was still gray and the birds had not started yet. I was there. My mom was there. Her breathing just got slower and slower and then it stopped and the room felt different immediately like someone had opened a door to somewhere else and the draft had changed everything. We sat with her for a while because that's what you do. We cried. We called people. The funeral home came and then she was gone and I was standing in her empty house surrounded by casserole dishes and sympathy cards and the weight of a grief so big I didn't know where to put it.
I stayed for the funeral and the reception and the awful week after where you have to sort through someone's entire life and decide what to keep and what to donate and what to throw away. I kept her recipe box and the quilt and a photo of her and my grandpa on their wedding day where they both looked impossibly young and happy. I kept a coffee mug that said world's best grandma in peeling letters. I kept a lot of things I didn't need because letting go felt like betraying her.
My boss was understanding. The company extended my leave. But after a month, reality crept back in. Bills, logistics, the need to do something other than sit in grief. The overseas position was still there, but they had moved me to a different country for the next phase of the project. It was supposed to be another year, maybe 18 months. I almost said no. I almost stayed and tried to figure out what normal looked like without her. But then I thought about what she has said about not letting my dream sit there. And I thought about the land and the automatic tax payment still ticking along. And I packed my bags again to go to the new work assignment.
So, I got on the plane. I went back to work. I kept paying the taxes. Fast forward through the work stint. When I finally came back, the first thing I wanted was to take a drive out and stand on my dirt again. Nothing clears jet lag like fresh air and old plants. I drove out with a coffee and my expectations set low. Maybe a few more weeds, maybe some new wild flowers. What I did not expect was a paved street with an archway sign, landscaping rocks, and a cheery little banner that said, "Welcome to HOA."
I had to double check my GPS because it felt like I'd taken a wrong turn into a brochure. HOA, by the way, did not exist when I left. The little two-lane road that used to run past my land now had a turn lane and a stone monument that looked like it was straight out of a master plan community act. There were street lights. There were shiny mailboxes. There were two-story craftsman wannabes with coming soon signs and porta-potties and work trucks with logos. And in the middle of all of that, where my quiet rectangle was supposed to be, there were four finished houses and two under construction wrapped in Tyvek like half-opened Christmas presents.
Anyway, I parked on the shoulder because the new street had signs that said residents only and no construction parking. And I was not trying to get towed seconds after landing. I got out and just stared. My brain was fuzzy from travel, but not fuzzy enough to miss what I was seeing. The four finished houses were neatly spaced along a curve. I could feel exactly where my old survey stakes used to stick up because I'd walked it enough times to memorize the corners. The second I saw the orientation of the houses and where the road cut in, my stomach dropped. There was no way this was right. The edge of one driveway lined up with where my north boundary should have been. The cul-de-sac at the end, dead center of where I used to park my beat-up pickup to sip coffee.
I must have looked like I was casing the joint because a guy in a safety vest with a clipboard walked up and hit me with the fake friendly tone you use on door-to-door salespeople. "Can I help you?" "I own land here," I said. "Or I did. Where's lot 27?" He checked his clipboard. "HOA doesn't have a 27. We've got 1 through 19 though. You looking for the older subdivision up the hill?" I pulled out my phone and brought up a scan of my plat. "I'm looking for parcel 16b32 meets and bounds starting at the iron pin at the northeast corner of—" He actually laughed. "Buddy, if you've got a meets and bounds, you're probably talking about the east side of the highway. This here is HOA phase 1 all recorded. If you're not a worker or homeowner, I cannot have you wandering around. It would be a liability."
There's a thing that happens when your brain tries to process two realities at once. One says you're standing where your land should be and the other says that this is a development with an HOA and marketing materials. Both cannot be true. I left without arguing. I'm not really the type to make a scene with a guy in a vest who probably had nothing to do with any of it.
So, I went home, grabbed my big red folder, and drove straight to the county recorder's office because if there's one thing I know, it's that paper beats vibes. The county building had not changed. Same atmosphere, same clerk who has seen it all and then some. I gave her my parcel number and asked for the full chain of title and any subdivision plat recorded in the last few years in that quarter township. She raised an eyebrow at my stack of documents like she recognized a 'this is going to be a long one' customer. She printed, copied, and stapled and pointed me to the microfilm because apparently the original survey from back in the day is only on those little spools that make you feel like you're in a movie.
I sat there for hours comparing my original plat, my meets and bounds, the GIS maps, and the new HOA subdivision plat. Well, here's the short version. The developer bought land adjacent to mine and then recorded a subdivision plat that extended their boundary line over the top of my parcel like it was all one piece. If you overlay the two, they shifted one corner by about 15 feet on paper, which cascaded into a lovely trapezoid of chaos that swallowed my little rectangle.