I’ve been thinking a lot about my friend lately.
Her husband passed away almost a year ago. We’ve been close since our kids were little, and I drive over to see her every few months.
The first time I visited after the funeral, I expected the house to feel empty.
It didn’t. If anything, it felt fuller.
His coat was still on the hook by the door. His coffee mug was still in the drying rack. His glasses were folded on the small table by his chair, and the bookmark was still in the book he was reading.
I told myself, of course. It’s only been a few weeks.
But six months later, when I came back, everything was still there.
The coat. The mug. The glasses. The book.
Other things had piled up around them. Months of mail on the kitchen counter, unopened. The local paper from three Tuesdays ago, still on the chair where she does her crosswords. A pair of slippers I didn’t recognize, still in their box, by the front door.
The house wasn’t messy.
It was paused.
Like the whole place had been holding its breath since the moment he stopped breathing, and nobody had told it the worst was over.
I didn’t say anything to her about it. It wasn’t my place. It still isn’t.
But I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.
Because what I saw in her house isn’t unusual. It’s almost universal for women who lose their husbands. And the women around her, the friends and sisters and daughters and women from her book club, almost never know what to say about it.