The middle of the bed
New duvet cover, but everything else is the same. Except Randy isn’t there.
We had two beds over the course of our marriage, both queens. King beds take up too much space in a room, we reasoned, and I’m a snuggler. When we would sleep in a king on vacation I always felt like it was too big, too much space between us.
I’m also a side sleeper and tend to start out rolled into a ball. I always slept close to the edge so I could reach my glass of water or turn the light off easily. After Randy died I continued to sleep in the same way, not taking up even half the bed.
There’s a TV series called Man on the Inside and the main character is a husband newly widowed. In one scene the camera is above him as he lies in bed, flat on his back, taking up less than half the bed. It felt so sad, so lonely, that I cried. Because that’s exactly how it felt for me. Not so much that I’m in the bed, but that Randy isn’t.
Lately, though I really don’t want a new life, I see have to continue on and so much has changed that I guess I have one anyway. And I’m trying to do some things differently so that not every single thing reminds me that I was part of a couple and now I’m alone.
So I started to make a real effort to sleep in the middle of the bed. I’m told that it takes a month to really set a habit so I guess if I keep doing it eventually it will feel natural.
But here’s the thing—every time I make a significant change I feel like I’m erasing Randy from my life. Even though he’s already gone. It just makes me so sad.