Designing a New Life

When reality hits, it doesn’t tap you on the shoulder—it knocks the wind out of you. And this new reality? It’s the slow understanding that, at some point, I’ll have to go through Eddie’s things. I’m not ready for that. Not now. Maybe not for a long while.

What I am doing is making small changes—ones that make this life, the one without him, feel a little more like mine. I started with the bedroom. That space we shared, where we began and ended our days together, needed to shift. Those who’ve spent years waking beside their person feel just how loud the quiet becomes after they’re gone. I roll over now, and the love of my life isn’t there. The absence is physical.

Changing the bedroom furniture has helped ease me into this new life. What used to be our room is now my room—but it’s still filled with pieces of Eddie, tucked into every corner. On his side of the bed, his things remain. Because even in this new chapter, he still has a place. On the wall hangs our photo. Whether it’s our room or just mine now, that picture hangs exactly where it’s supposed to be.

While redesigning my life and space, I find myself thinking, Would Eddie like this? Even with my girly touches here and there, I still want it to feel like a space that would’ve been just as comfortable for him as it is for me. I want to make this new life my own—but in a way that still honors the part of him that lives in it.

An Everyday Presence

It’s funny how Eddie shows up in the everyday. I’ll be going about my day, and something—a smell, a sound, the way light flickers across a photo—pulls me right back to him. It’s not overwhelming. It’s gentle. A soft reminder that love doesn’t disappear just because life changes. Sometimes I catch myself doing something out of habit and realize it’s one of his habits too. That kind of closeness doesn’t fade.

I’ve come to understand that moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting. Eddie still lives in the way I move through the world now—in how I make space for people, in how I show love, in the way I’ve learned to sit with both sorrow and joy in the same breath.

He’s in the meals I make, in the shows we used to love, in the way I say things without realizing they sound like him. My days have changed, but he’s still in them. I’m building something new, piece by piece—but he’s coming with me, in all the quiet ways.

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