I’m Megan. I’m 17, and for as long as I can remember, I knew exactly what I was going to wear to prom. Not something new, not something expensive—my mom’s dress. It was lavender, soft satin, simple in a way that didn’t need attention to be beautiful. It just was. There are photos of her wearing it, standing on a porch with sunlight in her hair, smiling like the world hadn’t touched her yet. When I was little, I used to sit beside her and trace those pictures with my fingers, imagining myself in that same dress, in that same moment. “One day,” I’d tell her, “I’m going to wear this too.” And she would smile, gently smoothing the fabric like it was something sacred. “Then we’ll keep it safe,” she’d say. Back then, I thought that meant forever.

But forever didn’t come the way I thought it would. Cancer doesn’t care about plans or promises. One year she was in the kitchen, flipping pancakes, laughing at her own off-key singing. The next, she was too tired to stand, too weak to smile the same way. I remember the quiet most of all—the way the house changed before she was even gone. And then one day, she was. Just… gone. I was 12, old enough to understand what it meant, but too young to accept it. After that, everything felt different. Not louder, not chaotic—just empty. Like someone had taken all the warmth out of the world and left everything else behind.

My dad tried to hold things together. I could see it in the way he forced routines, in the way he asked if I was okay even when he wasn’t. But we weren’t really living—we were just surviving one day at a time, moving forward because we didn’t know how to stop. The laughter didn’t come back. The music didn’t either. Even holidays felt quieter, like something was always missing. I learned how to keep my feelings to myself, how to carry memories without letting them spill over. It became normal to feel incomplete, like part of me had been paused in time the day we lost her.

But I never let go of the dress. I kept it hidden in the back of my closet, zipped inside a garment bag like a secret I wasn’t ready to share. Sometimes, when the house was too quiet, I’d take it out and just hold it. Run my hands over the fabric. Close my eyes. It still smelled faintly like something I couldn’t name but somehow recognized. It still felt like her. Not just a memory, not just something she left behind—but a piece of her that somehow stayed. And every time I touched it, I didn’t feel as alone.