My husband has now been dead for two years and two months. Twenty-six months. Seven-hundred ninety-two days. He’s been dead for longer than the amount of time we knew each other before we got married.

Every time I do the calculations of how long he’s been dead, I’m astonished. Sometimes by how long it’s been, sometimes by how much longer I probably will live without him. It takes my breath away every time. How can he really be gone? How can I really be moving forward, finding joy in every day? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I know that he is gone and that I am moving forward, finding joy in every day, without exception.

Some recent milestones:

I went on a big trip last month that gave me the opportunity to leave some of his cremains in a beach spot that Heidi Klum is rumored to visit from time to time. I hope he gets a good view of her in a bikini at some point.

On that trip, I relaxed in a way I have not relaxed in years. Since my husband died, I’ve spent a lot of time sitting still, napping, and doing things that probably look like relaxing, but my mind has been either numb or occupied, and one thing my late husband taught me is that real relaxation is characterized by a mind that is free to wander. I relaxed on the trip in a way he would approve of.

(Sidenote: He taught me everything I know about relaxing. He realized I needed lessons when he came into the dining room one day and saw me sitting with perfect posture at the table with a glass of wine. “What are you doing?” he asked. “Relaxing!” I told him. He just shook his head sadly and said, “You’re doing it wrong.” Lucky for me, he took me under his wing.)

That feeling of spaciousness in my mind enabled me to do something big when I got home. I moved two sculptures that had been in my bedroom up to the living room. This may sound anti-climactic, so let me give a little context. When my husband remodeled our basement bedroom in 2015, he built two niches for art into the wall opposite the bed. They are lit beautifully. We bought a sculpture together to put in one and then he gave me a second one as a gift.

I’ve loved having the two sculptures in those niches, lit to perfection, but while I was on my trip, I began thinking about shifting the energy in my bedroom. It’s my bedroom now, not ours. I decided to move the sculptures up to the living room and find something new for the bedroom art niches.

Now that the sculptures are in the living room, everyone who comes into the house sees them and comments on them. They are getting much more attention and they give me an opportunity to talk about my husband. The empty niches in my bedroom feel spacious and open to possibilities—a feeling I like.

I am also visiting the bench commemorated to him less often. I went daily for a long time, then weekly. If I went more than a week without stopping by, I would begin to feel anxious. I’ve gradually stopped feeling the anxious desperation to get to his bench. When I went on this recent trip, it wasn’t until my third day back from my trip that I found myself pulled to it while walking the dogs. I hadn’t even planned to visit it, but when I got within a block of it, I felt pulled there.

That feeling of being pulled is familiar to me now. So many times, I’ve found myself at the bench without any memory of making a decision to go to it. That’s what happened on my third day back—my pace quickened without my conscious knowledge of it and suddenly I was there, sitting on the bench, tears spilling over my face. In those moments when I find myself suddenly at the bench, I’m always surprised that life goes on around me. On that particular day, I noticed a woman and her personal trainer doing lunges across the park, young parents and a sobbing toddler walking slowly by, my dog sniffing around at the grass.  

These are reminders that life does go on. My life goes on without Tom, and I like to think that his life beyond what I can comprehend goes on, too. Just as I’m having new adventures without him, he’s having new adventures without me. I hope our paths will cross again in the future, but how that will happen is beyond me.