The visa itself wasn't the hard part. The hard part was everything happening around it — the house, the school transition, the job search, the emotional weight of an international move landing all at once.

It's the end of May here in the United Kingdom. The evenings are getting longer, that particular British gold light that stretches past 9pm like it's trying to convince you summer is real and permanent. And somewhere in the back of my head, I'm aware that back home, Memorial Day just passed. That somebody grilled something. That somebody drove somewhere. That people I used to know went about the whole ritual of it without me.