Five days after my husband’s death of cancer at the age of fifty-five, I stood in our master bathroom.
To my right was our closet, stuffed with my clothes and Jason’s—ties he’d barely worn in years since his company got more casual, wrinkle-free button-downs and khakis, t-shirts from concerts he’d attended, and F-1 racing fan gear.
I walked past the vanity, spotting his razor and toothbrush. His towel was still hanging over the shower’s glass door.
When I stepped into our room, I saw Jason’s shoes organized perfectly in the soft, compartmented contraption hanging off the bathroom door. Far less organized was the top of our dresser, where his receipts, mail, and one of his watches were scattered. His jacket was draped over an easy chair, and his many baseball caps hung on a hat rack.
By the time my eyes reached his nightstand, the books and phone charger there looked blurry. A few tears dripped down my cheeks as I walked into the neighboring living room.
My mom was in the kitchen, a few feet away. I blurted, “He’s everywhere!” I was sobbing by the end of the phrase. My mom rushed over and hugged me, and my dad, who was relaxing in the recliner, came over and did the same. “His stuff—it’s all over our room!” I cried. “It’s so—it’s so hard to look at!”
For a few minutes, I wept, and they held me. When I’d caught my breath, I said, “And the hat rack—I keep waking up in the morning and glancing at it and thinking someone is standing there!”
That made us all chuckle.
“Do you want me to move the hat rack upstairs?” my mom asked.
“Yes, please,” I said. “And after his service—I think I need to start going through his clothes.”
“We can help you with that,” my dad said.
The next day, we gathered with hundreds of people for Jason’s service. Soon after, as promised, my parents helped me go through Jason’s clothes.
In the following weeks, while my parents stayed to help and then after they went home, I spent hours going through all his stuff in our room. Piles of papers and family heirlooms in a safe. The birthday cards he’d kept in a drawer of his nightstand. His carefully cultivated collection of well-made shoes.
I knew that going through his things so quickly might seem odd to some people. I’d heard stories of widowed spouses who didn’t ever want to get rid of their late partner’s things. But I knew I needed our bedroom to start feeling like my space.
I didn’t want to remove him from the room entirely; I simply needed to curate my memories of him there. So after donating and distributing and tossing his clothes and the remnants of his life that had been on every surface, I hung up photos of him and our family on nearly all the walls. Pictures made me happy. Seeing dress shirts Jason would never again wear didn’t.
I also brought color—bright, vibrant shades—into the room. Jason and I had always had neutrals in our bedroom, such as the gray comforter we’d been using. But now that it was just me, I wanted to be surrounded by saturated reds, greens, blues, and purples. My mom had given me a gorgeous, colorful quilt she’d made, and I’d been using it in the guest room. I exchanged it for the gray comforter, placed the quilt on my bed, and bought matching pillows—velvety soft, in multiple solid colors—to throw on top. One afternoon, I drove across town and paid $40 for a fantastic red armchair I’d found on Facebook Marketplace. I put it next to the window in my room and moved the cream-colored chair upstairs. At the local Home Goods store, I bought inexpensive art that exploded with color and brought even more life to my bedroom.
When it was all done, I stood in the middle of the room, slowly turning, taking it all in.
It was full of joy. It felt like me.
And with all the pictures of Jason’s gorgeous, smiling face on the walls, it still reminded me of him.
My room became a place I could relax or cry or read or knit. I could sit on the bed, talking to my sister, or stand at my dresser with a notebook, writing about my memories of Jason.
He was still all around me, but in a beautiful way, not a traumatic one. And I’d created a space where I could learn to be my new self—full of grief and hope, figuring out life again.
