I had imagined turning sixty a hundred different ways in my mind over the past year.

I’d imagined a quiet dinner, just me and my oldest son Mark at that Italian restaurant downtown where they make their own pasta. I’d imagined my daughter Sarah calling from wherever she was living now—Colorado? New Mexico?—to sing off-key through the speaker phone. I’d imagined my husband, if he had been here, putting his hand on the small of my back and squeezing, the way he used to do when we were young and couldn’t quite believe we’d managed to build this life together.

But mostly, I’d imagined a house full of noise.

My husband used to say that when we got married, he wanted a big family. “A loud house,” he’d laugh, pulling me close in our tiny apartment before the kids came. “A table that’s never empty. A place where people are always coming and going and there’s always someone talking over someone else.”

We had six kids in ten years. Mark. Jason. Caleb. Grant. Sarah. Eliza. Four boys, two girls, and enough noise between them to shake the walls of our suburban home in Portland, Oregon. For years, that house was exactly what my husband had dreamed of—a symphony of sibling arguments and laughter and the constant sound of running feet and slamming doors and homework complaints and excited chatter about school dances and sports games.

And then one day, he decided the noise was too much.