It’s the Furniture That Gets Me
Reflections on moving to a new chapter of life after the loss of a partner
Oh, my love. If you could see me now, I’m not sure what you’d have to say.
You would have liked all the young couples who are picking up our furniture, starting out their lives. The medicine cabinet we found together, the wooden table we sanded and painted. The couch we cuddled on. The bed frame. It was too much. To keep all ‘our’ pieces from our life we built together is too much.
The objects in our lives that we own are embedded with our scent, our soul, our touches, our fights and our tears. Every shared decision where we had breakfast every single Sunday for years lived in that tiny table that was plenty for us. We were the small cute couple. We were everyone’s favorite tiny couple, cuddling in a corner, both of us always cuddling. And years of being a couple ending in a second with your death.
The life we had becomes erased, piece by piece as the furniture floats through the door. It’s us, fading, piece by piece. You lose not only the partner, but the couple you were with them, and the person you were with them.
They’re all memories now encased in a box that surrounds you, made of tears. It’s clear, you can see through it.
You can live your life with it on — but it’s there, catching your tears, capturing your grief. You navigate the world with this new badge over your heart. Not a widow, because we weren’t yet married… but yes, we were long-term partners. You navigate the world with a new compass, too.
You are the only captain of your ship now.
I thought three months in, it was coming to a better place of closure with you gone. I had sworn to get therapy, started reading again, exercise, travel. I hadn’t taken much time off work because it was helping me to not pack and deal with the furniture. I had tough days but was getting on a journey forward. I even do a little light cooking — nothing much, but trying to savor moments, the power of taste, to experience. You were the cooker, I was the sous chef and cleaner. The roles are now all mine in the play called ‘New Brutal Chapter.’
Who knows when those moments end? The fragility of all existence is suddenly more clear in painful brilliance than anything and it scares me.
It’s this silence in the apartment I can’t stand. How it’s empty of music, of life, of your spirit. You don’t haunt it with your presence. I am haunted by your absence, and the absence of us.
I don’t believe in ghosts, never been spiritual. But there is one day I think of. I was in our bed and looked over to the doorway to our bedroom. It must have been maybe two weeks after your death. I didn’t believe in anything supernatural, but I will remember feeling that feeling of you there, hovering. It was extraordinary, like nothing I had experienced — this electricity.
Something otherworldly was there. You know when someone enters a room and you can just sense you’re not alone? That one night, for a good 20 minutes, I stared at that space, and you were there. You were there, with me. For a moment, you were still there.
It would fade. So much would, eventually. Perhaps you were checking in on me, worried — Have you eaten yet, baby? Are you cooking? Please eat something.
I keep telling myself this next chapter will be healing — a better apartment, a chance to heal, finally, than in our apartment, where I could never heal. Me packing things slowly, but also minimizing my life, finding freedom in simplicity.
Eventually chances at apartments and roommates, although that fills me with dread. I don’t want to room with them, and the look on their faces, wondering if I should tell them why I’m moving. I say it’s the neighborhood.
What I mean to say, what I want to say, is I can’t live where we lived, because it’s breaking me in two, and I’m already broken. I consider putting an ad out — ‘Widow seeks other widows for helping move the bags of his clothing to the curb.’ I just want someone to hold me and the box of Kleenex that I take from room to room. I’ve left the pickup for the clothing for the day or two before I have to be out of our apartment — the apartment we picked together.
That way the realities of moving will keep the tears before they fall. The bags of your shirts, I can’t look at. I’ve taken them down the hall twice but dissolve into a heap before I make it halfway down.
The clothes and the furniture. I hate them both. I can see why monks choose simplicity — you can’t mourn the same way if you don’t have the same pain from things that remind of you of someone else. That saffron robe, a brilliant idea. I see that now.
I tell myself I will get through this, a new chapter, I can handle adversity, I’ve done it before. It’s the furniture going, piece by piece, that gets me. I can’t keep living here, but don’t know how to get there.
The old couch, our couch? The one we stretched out on, with pillows, with us? I would give a lifetime of everything to be with you on that couch and say goodbye to a chance at anything new. Those new couples, the excitement at that new table, of starting that new life together? I want to tell them to treasure every second, that the pain of it going away is almost too hot and unbearable and not worth the beautiful moments on that couch.
The couple that got the old medicine cabinet? They sent me a picture — I can imagine your giddiness and joy bubbling over if you had seen how they sanded it and painted it blue. “Oh my god that’s so wicked,” your head nodding. Big smiles and laughs. You would have hung out with them in a heartbeat. We would have gone for beers or brunch. What an odd way to meet. What an odd way to say goodbye.
I say nothing, tell them to enjoy the furniture and close the door. I look around at the emptiness and see that the room is my heart, not just the furniture gone. I know one day it will fill again. But right now, empty is the room my heart lives in, as empty now as the apartment we once lived in together and I don’t know how I will ever have it be full.
It was just a couch, and it’s gone to a good home. I think I am envious because the couch can start again. It’s the people left behind, watching the couch go, well, they are stuck with silent rooms and empty hearts and so much … unknown.
I will get through this, I will get through this. But I’ll never buy another couch or think of another one without thinking of you.
