Make a Move

I feel the huge void in my life from Matt dying on a daily basis, but extra on days where I have to make big decisions about our future.

Our house was never meant to be our forever home. We bought it as an investment property. We intended to move but couldn’t when he got sick.

He made me promise him we wouldn’t stay here. At the time I thought it was ridiculous that he would think for a second we would just up and move out of the last house we shared together. But he must have known what I didn’t know.

This house is eating me alive. All of the bad memories we had here far outweigh the good. When I look around, I see him chasing Quinn through the house or dancing with me in the living room. I see him swimming in the pool and throwing Quinn into the water over and over again while she laughed hysterically. If I close my eyes I can almost hear him here. Every once in a while I feel like a crazy person and think I hear him talk. I see some good times, but most of all I see cancer and the toll it took on all of us.

I see me dragging him to the car to get him to the hospital when we thought he just had the flu. We broke things on the way out because I wasn’t near strong enough to be moving someone his size. I see me screaming and crying in the shower because it was the only place I could cry for a while. I see post surgery and diagnosis anger from him, when we had a beautiful 75 degree February day and he was so depressed that he wouldn’t even walk to the back door to watch Quinn run in the sunshine. I see him suffering. I see him struggling to make it from one room to another. I see him screaming in pain when the strongest pain pills wouldn’t even touch when the ileostomy bag would leak and the waste from the chemo left chemical burns on his exposed intestine. I see his life crumbling. I see ours crumbling, too.

Moving is the right thing. I prayed for the right place to come up. I prayed for God’s timing. I know that God’s timing isn’t my timing. I know that I could plan and look and plan and search and over analyze and pray and stall. I know that if I wait for everything to be perfect and safe, I’ll be waiting forever.

Life is not perfect.

Life is not safe.

I am aware now even more than I’ve ever been that life is fluid. You either flow with it or let it drown you.

So in January, we’re making a big move to a smaller house in the heart of a little city that has embraced us at our worst.

Q will be able to ride her bike to the park, the library, her new school.. it’s a fresh start.

As we were walking through the house when we viewed it she was out of her mind with excitement. She has big plans for the front and back porch. She has already laid claim to her room. It feels right.

When Matt died, a huge part of me died with him. I’ve struggled to figure out how to live without him. The confidence I have in my ability to adult has tanked. I second guess every decision. I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing on a good day.

I do know that home is where she is happiest and she is so excited about new adventures in a new house.

When the bad memories creep in I try to push them away with the good ones, like how many times a day he kissed my face just because.

Like how he would move heaven and earth to make sure he was wherever I was on New Year’s Eve every year.

Him chasing her around the roof of our old building in Atlanta And the look on her face when he held her

cancer can’t take those things away from us. It can never take away how I still feel when I think about him kissing me.

I may never feel that way again, but I know exactly how lucky I was to have what we had. It doesn’t exist anywhere else.

A house is just sticks and bricks. We hope to leave the bad memories here and carry the good ones with us to the new house.

During Matt’s railroad career we moved 4 times in 3 years. We learned early that home is where your people are. We may be one short of our 3 musketeers but we’re packing up and starting fresh.

One foot in front of the other, one step at a time.

Walking by faith, not by sight.