Ten years. That's how long I stayed away from Rochester, the place where I grew up, where my parents died, where my grandparents finished raising me after everything fell apart. I told myself there was nothing left for me there. But the truth? I was running.
This episode is different. It's just me. No guest, no interview. Just me telling you about what happened when I finally went back. I took my wife and daughters to Rochester for the first time. I showed them the house I grew up in, the door I took apart as a kid, the deck where I'd eat the salt off pretzels and throw them in the snow. I took my four-year-old daughter to meet her grandpa at the mausoleum. She walked right up and said, "Hi Grandpa, I love you." And I lost it.
Then she asked me where my mom was. Four words from the backseat of a rental car that I had no answer to. "I don't know, sweetheart. Daddy doesn't know where she's buried." I didn't go to my mom's funeral. And sitting in that car, unable to answer my daughter's question, wasn't about guilt. It was about not having a place to bring her. No grave, no mausoleum. Just nothing.
But here's what I learned: the parts of yourself you think you left behind are never really gone. They're just waiting for you to come back and find them. And going back to the place you've been avoiding might be exactly how you realize how far you've actually come. This one's raw. This one's real. And if you've ever run from a place that hurt you, I think you'll feel this one.
Going back to Rochester didn't crush me like I thought it would. It reminded me that grief and life can exist in the same place. That I'm not that scared kid anymore. And that maybe, just maybe, I don't have to run anymore.
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