08/27/2026
I didnât know giving away a bed could hold so much grief.
It wasnât just furniture.
Jimmy bought that bed before we were even married.
We werenât engaged yet, but we already knew we wanted a life together.
And for the next 14 years, that bed was part of our life together.
Then Jimmy died.
While we were preparing the house to sell, the frame was taken apart and leaned against the wall near our garage.
I walked past it all the time.
And when it finally came time to decide what was moving to Oklahoma with us, I remember knowing one thing with absolute certainty:
I couldnât take our bed.
I couldnât imagine putting it back together in another house knowing he would never sleep beside me in it again.
At the time, I donât think I understood much beyond that.
I just knew I couldnât do it.
Eventually I moved into another house.
I slept without a bed frame for quite a while before finding one that looked completely different from ours.
Something girlier.
Something I picked because I liked it.
And even that felt strange.
Over the years there has been new bedding. Little things added to the room. Slowly making the space feel different.
Almost six years later, Iâm realizing how much of rebuilding has looked like that.
Tiny, ordinary transitions from ours to mine that didnât feel tiny at all.
Not because I stopped loving what was ours.
Not because I wanted that chapter to end.
And definitely not because creating something new erased what came before it.
I was simply learning, one tiny decision at a time, how to live inside a life that was mine now.
And some of those seemingly ordinary decisions carried a whole lot of grief.
Maybe rebuilding isnât always one big brave step.
Sometimes itâs choosing a different bed.
Sometimes itâs buying new bedding.
Sometimes itâs slowly looking around a room that once felt completely foreign and realizing...
this is starting to feel like mine.
I think it took me a long time to understand that both could be true.
