Darla and I got home from vacation this afternoon. It’s easy to forget how hot it gets here when you’ve been relaxing in 75 degree weather.

The last time we went on vacation, we left our A/C running to make sure our house stayed cool. However, when we came back from that vacation, our A/C had broken and almost burned our house down. We learned a valuable lesson from that and this time we left our A/C off.

When we came home today, the temperature in our house was over 95 degrees. I don’t know the exact temperature, since our thermostat only measures temperatures up to 95 after which it displays “OL”, which I can only imagine means “over limit”. It was “OL” for about an hour, even now while I type this it reads 94 degrees.

We hurried around the house unpacking and cleaning up, while the dogs followed us around panting and trying to trip us wherever we walked. I finished unloading the contents of a suitcase and rolled it into the spare bedroom. It was much cooler than the other rooms.

“It’s so much cooler in Cole’s room,” my mind told me.

My mouth almost echoed those words before I realized how completely wrong I was. This wasn’t Cole’s room. It would have been Cole’s room, but it wasn’t anymore.

I passed Darla as I walked out of the hall and told her what had just transpired. She consoled me and asked if everything was alright. I reassured her that it was.

But it really wasn’t alright. I had just taken myself two steps backward in a long road to emotional recovery. I had a temporary lapse in memory and had failed to realize that Cole - my son born almost 16 months ago - was dead.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this. I walked out to the kitchen, unable to shake these thoughts. I put away some medicine from our trip and sneezed. The sneeze forced a couple tears out that I had been holding back. I blinked quickly to get them away before Darla walked in.

I walked back down the hallway and took one last look in the spare bedroom. It was time for me to close the door again to Cole’s room.

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