The funeral reception had ended two hours ago, but our house still smelled like the casseroles and sympathy flowers that well-meaning neighbors had brought in endless rotation over the past four days. The lilies in particular made my stomach turn—their sickly-sweet fragrance forever tainted now, inextricably linked to the memory of my fifteen-year-old daughter’s closed casket at the front of the church, surrounded by photographs from a life cut impossibly short. I stood at the kitchen sink, mechanically washing the same plate for the third time, staring out the window at the November dusk settling over our suburban backyard.
The tire swing David had hung from the oak tree when Emma was seven still hung there, motionless in the still air, a relic from a time when our greatest worry was whether she’d scrape her knee climbing too high. “Claire.” My husband’s voice behind me was flat, emotionless in that way it had been since the accident. Four days of shock had hollowed him out, leaving behind a man who looked like David but spoke with the mechanical precision of someone trying very hard not to feel anything at all.
“We need to talk about Emma’s room.”
I set down the plate, gripping the edge of the sink until my knuckles went white. “Not yet.”
“It’s been four days. The longer we wait, the harder it will be.” He moved to stand beside me, but he didn’t touch me, didn’t offer the comfort we both desperately needed and were both too broken to provide.
“I think we should pack up her things this weekend. Donate what we can. It’s not healthy to leave everything exactly as it was, like we’re waiting for her to come home.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
“She died four days ago, David. Four days. I haven’t even—I can’t even—” My voice cracked, the tears I’d been holding back since the funeral threatening to spill over again.
“Which is exactly why we need to do this now, while we can still function. Before the grief becomes so overwhelming that we can’t move forward at all.” His voice remained steady, controlled, but I heard the tremor underneath. “I can’t walk past her room every day and see her things exactly as she left them.
I can’t do it, Claire. It’s killing me.”
“So we just erase her? Pack everything away like she never existed?” The anger surged up from somewhere deep, hot and bitter.
“That’s not what I’m saying.” For the first time, emotion cracked through his composure—frustration, pain, desperation. “I’m saying we can’t live in a shrine. We can’t spend the rest of our lives frozen in this moment, surrounded by reminders of what we’ve lost.
We need to move forward, even if it’s just one small step at a time.”
“I’m not ready.” The words came out as a whisper. “You’ll never be ready. Neither will I.
But we have to do it anyway.” He turned to leave, then paused in the doorway. “I’m going to my brother’s for a few days. Give us both some space.
When I come back on Sunday, I’m going to pack up her room. I need you to understand that I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to survive.”
The front door closed quietly behind him fifteen minutes later.
I heard his car start, heard the crunch of gravel as he backed down the driveway, and then the house fell into a silence so complete it felt like being underwater. I stood there in the kitchen as darkness gathered outside, unable to move, unable to think, unable to do anything except breathe and remember and hurt with an intensity that seemed impossible to survive. Eventually, I found myself climbing the stairs to the second floor.
My feet carried me down the hallway past the bathroom Emma had complained was too small, past the linen closet where we’d measured her height with pencil marks every birthday, stopping at the door with the purple beaded curtain she’d hung when she was twelve because “doors are for people with no imagination, Mom.”
The beads clicked softly as I pushed through them into Emma’s room. David was right—everything was exactly as she’d left it last Wednesday morning before school. Unmade bed with the galaxy-print comforter bunched at the foot.
Desk covered with notebooks, sketch pads, colored pencils scattered like pick-up sticks. Bulletin board dense with photos, ticket stubs, postcards, fortune cookie fortunes pinned in overlapping layers. Bookshelves sagging under the weight of fantasy novels and poetry collections and field guides to birds and plants.
The closet door hanging open, revealing the organized chaos of her wardrobe—vintage band t-shirts, thrifted dresses, the black combat boots she’d saved three months of allowance to buy. This room was so completely, utterly Emma that standing in it felt like being stabbed repeatedly in the chest. I sank down onto her bed, pulling her pillow to my face and breathing in the scent of her shampoo, her laundry detergent, the essential oil blend she’d made herself because she’d read that lavender and chamomile helped with anxiety.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page to discover the rest 🔎👇
