When our family left Boston and returned to Arlington, my hometown, in early 2021, I didn’t expect to live in the house where I’d once gone for sleepovers.
It felt almost too provincial, my daughter’s new bedroom under the eaves of our 1922 Craftsman bungalow, the same room where I used to play with American Girl dolls and sing along to the Grease soundtrack. We enjoyed sharing this quaint anecdote with friends and new neighbors—how I was overcome with déjà vu as we unwittingly toured the Cherrydale home where one of my closest elementary school playmates had grown up two decades prior. How it abruptly dawned on me where we were. We took it as a sign the house was meant to be ours.
Then, just two months into our move, my mom went for bloodwork and learned that she was in leukemia crisis. Three days later she was on life support; in less than a month she was gone. Suddenly the familiarity of our new house was a blessing and a balm I hadn’t anticipated. It became an emotional refuge, a place to grieve and heal, and eventually a base for building the life I’d always dreamed for myself.
My mom always taught me that you must create the community you wish to belong to. When I was growing up (my dad died when I was 3), she was the consummate hostess, presiding over formal dinner parties, afternoon porch visits and everything in between with a grace and style that appeared effortless. Her home in Arlington’s Riverwood neighborhood was the perfect backdrop—an eclectic collection of art, antiques and found objects from her walks in the woods along Windy Run. She displayed a humble bird’s nest alongside delicate blown glass vessels; a bronzed sculpture of a duck beside an abandoned honeycomb.
Following in her footsteps, I threw myself into decorating our new home and starting our own tradition of hosting. We began with a low-stakes neighborhood pumpkin-carving party, followed by a string of dinner parties, backyard cookouts and a birthday extravaganza for our older daughter complete with pink-tinted deviled eggs and a petting zoo of baby bunnies. I found joy in seeing my home filled with friends old and new.
When we first moved back to Arlington, vacating a 900-square-foot New England apartment, we had barely enough furniture to fill one room. Having previously run my own online vintage furniture business (a passion I had developed while scouring the Virginia countryside with my mom in search of the best barn sales and antiques dealers), I set myself the challenge of furnishing the rest of our house with only vintage and pre-owned items.
First came the kitchen table—a handmade Amish pedestal table, studded with water rings and slightly warped—that a neighbor was throwing out. I had it refinished and paired it with a faded Turkish rug from Facebook Marketplace. My next big score was the set of lacquered bamboo ladder-back dining chairs I spied on Instagram as a “porch pick up” in Dallas and had shipped here. My husband, Kean, and I reupholstered them in a Schumacher fabric I had lusted after for years. I was off to the races.
And then my mom died.
For several months our home sat half-furnished, suspended in time and heavy with the weight of my grief. I wondered if I’d ever be ready to start designing again, to turn my mind to such trivial questions as paint colors or rug dimensions.
Only when I began to go through my mom’s house and belongings did it dawn on me that the process of blending her home and mine would be central to processing my sorrow. I won’t say healing because great loss is not something one heals from. Rather, it’s like scar tissue that becomes almost comfortable after enough time.
Wading through the memories clinging to her jewelry, her art, her furniture and dishes, I was struck by how much our homes keep the score of our lives. I’ve always loved visiting estate sales. My husband once asked if I found it creepy or depressing to sift through the remnants of other people’s lives. To me, it’s quite the opposite: It’s how their stories live on. There is a certain beauty in recycling an object someone has chosen for their home. Doing so imbues that object with a new layer of significance and history.
Decorating our new house was how I worked through my grief and remembered my mom. It brought to bear all of the things I’ve always espoused as my design philosophy: that your home should be a reflection of who you are and have been, steeped in individuality and rich with the patina of pieces that tell stories.
Seeing the possessions my mom picked out—that I grew up with—recontextualized in my own home, where they now are being used to host friends and neighbors as we put down roots, has allowed her to live on and me to move forward.
I have woven her into the fabric of my life. Her curiosity cabinet stands in my living room—only now, blended in with her treasures, are pieces my husband and I have picked up on our travels, and seashells one of our daughters gathered at the beach.
Our first-floor hallway displays the oil landscapes my mom favored alongside several pieces of contemporary portraiture that my husband and I acquired together, and some of our own work (we both painted in our abundant free time before kids). The space is lit by a vintage green Murano glass chandelier that previously hung in my childhood kitchen, and later in our daughter’s Boston nursery. An African funeral mask from Mom’s art collection sits atop a pedestal table, a wedding gift handmade by my husband’s cousin.
My mom didn’t believe in saving nice things for a rainy day. She lived every moment to its fullest and was never precious about physical objects. Growing up, we ate every meal off the Wedgwood Wild Strawberry china, usually in the formal dining room, and we actually lived in our living room. On any given evening, she and our chocolate Lab could be found curled up on the cream linen sofa, dog hair be damned.
As a parent of young children, I have embraced her philosophy that kid-friendly doesn’t have to mean plastic or cheap. When I was pregnant with our first daughter and realized the sharp corners of our coffee table were less than ideal for a toddler, I sourced a beautiful vintage rug and had it made into a cocktail ottoman. I chose a dark blue-and-brown Persian textile that would hide stains left by the sticky little hands of a tyke learning to pull up and cruise.
Much of our art collection is within reach of my children’s curious hands. I am teaching them early to have respect and care for delicate objects, to appreciate beauty and understand fragility. That lesson is worth the occasional broken teacup or stained cushion.
As I move forward in my life, creating new traditions, I keep my mom’s memory close. It’s her voice in my head, telling me to go with my gut on the shade of red for the guest room, or to be fearless and have those gorgeous vintage runner rugs that don’t fit our hallway cut down and installed on the stairs.
I wish she could be here to see how her love for grand gestures and drama has rubbed off on me: the oversize disco ball hung in the playroom; the office gallery wall of Kean’s vintage band posters, which I framed and surprised him with for Father’s Day; the pink-and-red polka dot drapes in the dining room. Every room sings with personality.
Call me superstitious, but something about having a home filled with the juju of past generations feels deeply comforting, like wrapping up in one of my mamaw’s quilts. Like my grief, decorating this house is not something that will one day be finished. It’s a process of rearranging, reorganizing around the contours of our evolving life. I will always carry my mom with me.
Annabel Joy prefers homes, furniture and people with a bit of patina. When she’s not hunting for vintage treasures she can usually be found getting messy in her kitchen with her daughters or curled up with a good book.