The new tenant painted over the stars on my son’s ceiling

Dear Delyara, When my son was seven, I painted glow-in-the-dark stars across his bedroom ceiling. He was frightened of darkness and wanted the Big Dipper above his bed. I did not know what the Big Dipper looked like, so most of the stars were in the wrong place. He loved them anyway. He died at nineteen. I kept the house for six years afterward, mostly because I could not imagine another family inside his room. Eventually, money forced me to sell. Today, the new owner sent me a polite photograph showing renovations because she knew I had lived there a long time. The room is beautiful now—white walls, wooden flooring, a desk by the window. The stars are gone. I zoomed in until the ceiling filled my phone. Nothing. Fresh paint. I knew this would happen. I did not expect strangers to preserve bad constellations for a dead boy they never met. Still, I felt anger toward a woman who had done nothing except make her child a room of his own. Tonight, I found an old photograph of my son lying on his bed, pointing upward. The stars barely appear in the picture, just faint green dots above him. I realize now that I was never grieving paint. I was grieving the fact that another child can sleep peacefully beneath that ceiling because mine no longer needs the light.