I never expected that one day I would open my bedroom closet and find it empty. As a child, I always assumed I would be with my parents evermore; therefore my closet would always be full of pretty pink lace dresses, stuffed fluffy animals, and toys. My mother would never leave me and my father would never let me go.

My teenage years, I thought I would never get the chance to leave; I would be perpetually stuck with them forever. The closet jam packed with low cut, torn up jeans, prom and homecoming gowns, and playful pictures of friends and first loves. My parents and I would scream at the top of our lungs, on almost a nightly basis. Looking back, it makes me laugh.

In college, on spring breaks, I would return home to admire my closet, stuffed with packed up childhood memories and friends I left behind. Reminding myself that turning into an adult, was a bitter sweet experience. Though I never showed it, I missed my mother everyday and was scared without the protection, I always felt with my father at home. At the time I secretly wished I could stay home forever, the child within me, crying, whenever I returned to school.

As an adult, with my children building up their own closet memories, I would visit my parents, knowing that one day they would leave me. But even then I knew I would have my closet, packed with boxes, now holding pictures of weddings and my children coming into the world. I never thought for a day that closet would go away, those memories would leave. Even then I would stubbornly convince myself my parents would be around eternally.

Now I stand, in front of an empty closet, my children grown and making lives of their own. And my parents have gone. The house I grew up in; the bedroom, I cried, laughed, screamed, and danced in, is being sold. The closet once full of my memories, cleared out for new owners, with memories of their own to make. I miss my mothers laugh and my fathers' jokes.

And as I stare into the emptiness, and look back, I now know that the real closet, the one that held those wonderful moments in my life, is not the one I stand in front of, but myself. My parents deep in my heart and would remain there, everlasting. As a tear moves slowly down my cheek, I let my memories fill my soul, and close the closet.