missing my old life

Everything still feels like it’s happening to someone else. I see images of our house on my security cameras and it feels like a punch to my gut. Oh yeah, my old life. Axl asks for chips and I realize we’re out, and remember that we only bought those chips for Pete. Pete. It’s not like I ever forget he’s gone, but I let myself get distracted with the mundane inertia of having two kids under 5–one will need a snack, the other needs a diaper change, there are bottles to wash and formula to make. All of which is happening in a new space, where we are creating new routines from scratch. I stare at his photo all day long. Touch his urn every time I walk by. And yet still, somehow, I can forget sometimes that he was real and our life together was real.

It makes sense to have started a new life, but it’s weird having my old one just sitting there, frozen in time. I stayed there for 3 weeks after he died, and it felt okay. It was raw the first few days to look around and know that he had hung, fixed, or built everything there, but I was surrounded by his things, our things, and that was a comfort to me. I brought so much of him here with me – his clothes, his jackets, his hats. An entire chest of drawers he’d built himself, filled with all his watches, cufflinks, tiny mementos. He is here, but in the past tense. Back at our house, he still seems to exist in the present.

We had a whole life out there. And overnight I lost it. I feel like my brain is protecting me by not allowing me to grasp the full concept of that. I straight up can’t really comprehend that. We are doing well here, and we’ll build a nice life for ourselves. My kids will have good childhoods despite it all, somehow. But not only does every atom in my body miss my husband, I miss the life that we worked so hard to build. We loved our modest little townhouse. Our simple little life. We didn’t spend our money on vacations or flashy shit, we spent it on stuff to make our house cooler, comfortable, more efficient for us. A “date night” was just sitting on our patio having a fire after our kids went to sleep. Home, together, with our kids was the only place either one of us wanted to be. And overnight, that home that provided me with so much security and safety and love was gone. It’s not even about the house; Pete was my home.

And yet it’s like there’s a museum of it sitting there, waiting for me. His winter gear laid out on top of the dryer, waiting for the next snowstorm. His work bag, sitting right inside the coat closet, waiting for him to grab it on his way out the door. His tools, lying where he last needed them. My work desk, all my art supplies. Our kids’ rooms. Our bed. His garden and plants. A whole life waiting to be picked up where we left off. It’s all just waiting for me, even though I can never go back to it. I’m just hoping that with the passage of time, I can return and see all those relics as treasures instead of taunts.

I can’t help but wonder if our new life will ever be as good as our old one. I’m so grateful for what we have here, the opportunities we’ve been given, and the generosity we’ve been shown. But this new life doesn’t have Pete and that’s all I want. I want my old life back so desperately, and it’s just not possible. I can only move forward. But I’ve never ached so much for the past. I don’t know how anyone manages to move on when it feels like your heart exists on a whole other planet. It’s still beating, I know that, but I can’t feel it in my chest anymore. Too much of it is wherever Pete is, and the rest of it is at my old house. I get through the day here on autopilot, feeling lucky that at least my funnybone still works, that I still manage to laugh so much throughout the day at my funny kids and family. That I am able to smile. But my heart is back in Massachusetts and I wonder how long it will take for it to catch back up and find me here, when it will meet me where I am instead of where I’ve been.