It had just been sitting there in the driveway since the day she died, untouched. I figured it was time to let it go. But what was supposed to be a simple step toward moving forward ended up turning into something I never expected.
While getting the car ready to sell, I found something that shook me so deeply. It made me start questioning everything I once believed to be true. About her.
About us. About our entire life together. After Nancy died, everything about my life just lost its shape.
I don’t know how else to put it. Things that used to matter stopped feeling important. Days started to blur together.
Nights felt longer, heavier. I would wake up in the morning, stare at the ceiling for God knows how long, and then force myself out of bed. Because I had a job to show up to and bills to pay.
So I dragged myself up, go through the motions, shave, shower, dress. But the truth is, I wasn’t really there. My body showed up, but my mind didn’t.
Even when I made it to the office, sitting behind that desk felt like a punishment. I would stare at my screen and barely take in the words. I was disconnected from everything.
Grief does that. Sometimes I would find myself stuck in a memory of the last week before she died. Her death wasn’t sudden, but that didn’t make it any easier.
Nancy had breast cancer. We didn’t even know until it was already too late. By the time the doctors found it, the cancer had already moved from her breast to her lungs.
It had spread quietly, and by the time it showed symptoms, constant coughing, chest pains, it was already stage four. The doctors told us that treatment wasn’t going to cure her, but they could try to buy her more time, and we took what we could get. They gave her medication.
She took it without complaining. She smiled through it most days, but I could see the pain eating away at her. Some days she couldn’t even get out of bed.
I knew my priorities had to change. I cut down on work immediately. Nothing seemed more important than being by her side.
Every second that I wasn’t at work, I spent it with her. I drove her to every appointment. I tried to stay strong for her, even when I felt like crumbling.
We spent nearly a year in and out of hospitals. Every time we got a checkup, I held my breath, hoping for even the smallest sign that things were getting better. But deep down, I knew it was just wishful thinking…
Her condition kept declining. Her body got weaker. She slept more, talked less, until one morning I woke up beside her, and she was just gone with no goodbye or last words.
She slipped away in her sleep. Losing her felt like losing the air in the room. The funeral came and went.
People were kind. They brought food. They hugged me.
They said things like, she’s in a better place, or at least she’s not in pain anymore, and I nodded and thanked them. But none of that helped, because the pain didn’t end with her suffering. It just moved into me.
After the burial, everyone else got to return to their routines. But I came home to the same house, the same silence, the same bed where she used to sleep beside me. Everything reminded me of her.
Life didn’t just feel different, it felt broken, and I didn’t know how to fix it. Before everything that happened, Nancy and I were married for five years, and before that, we had one of those on-and-off kinds of relationships. You know the type.
Some years we were inseparable, other times we needed space, thought we were better off as friends, then somehow always found our way back to each other. Looking back, I think those early days helped us understand each other more deeply. We knew each other’s flaws, fears, and soft spots long before we said, I do.
So when we finally made it official, I believed we had something tested and real. But that didn’t mean the entire duration of the marriage was easy. We had our rough patches.
We argued, sometimes over small things, and sometimes over things that felt too big to fix. But no matter how hard things got, we always circled back to each other. I didn’t think of our marriage as perfect, but I thought it was honest.
One of the biggest trials we faced as a couple was trying to have children because we wanted to be parents. That was something we both dreamed about early on, but our reality turned out to be very different from our plans. We lost two pregnancies to miscarriage, and the third ended in a stillbirth.
It broke us in quiet ways. We both grieved differently. Eventually, after that third loss, we decided to get medical tests done.
That’s when we found out what had been causing it all. Nancy had something called antiphospholipid syndrome, APS for short. It’s an autoimmune disorder where the body’s own immune system attacks normal proteins in the blood.
In her case, it caused blood clots that blocked blood flow to the fetus during pregnancy. It was the reason we kept losing our babies. That diagnosis hit us hard.
Nancy didn’t cry in front of the doctor. She acted strong until we got home. She curled up on the couch that night and just broke, and I didn’t have the right words.
I just sat there holding her and feeling helpless at the same time. After that, we made the decision to stop trying for biological children. It wasn’t really a discussion.
We both knew we couldn’t go through another loss like that again. At one point, we started talking about adoption. We even looked at some agencies online, but every time we got close to taking the next step, we couldn’t agree on the process…
Our hearts were in it, but our paths kept missing each other. Eventually, the conversations just stopped happening. Not because we didn’t care, but because it hurt too much to admit we were stuck.
That chapter of our lives left deep marks on both of us. It was like carrying around a weight no one else could see. We smiled for the world, showed up to birthdays, and baby showers, and said we’re doing fine when people asked.
But inside, we were both nursing wounds that time alone wasn’t healing. I guess I’m saying all this because I want you to understand our marriage wasn’t always full of sunshine, but we loved each other through a lot. After Nancy passed, the days that followed felt like a blur.
The house we shared didn’t feel like a home anymore. It felt like a museum of her. Her toothbrush was still in the bathroom cup.
Her favorite sweater was still draped over the couch, where she always curled up to read. Her perfume lingered faintly in a closet. I would walk into the kitchen and see her favorite mug, and it would feel like my chest was being ripped open all over again.
Every corner of that house whispered her name. I thought about moving. A few times, I even opened up the laptop and started browsing apartments in other cities, other neighborhoods, anywhere that might feel like a clean slate.
But it was too much. Too many decisions. Too many unknowns.
Too much fear of leaving behind the last traces of her. Even though being surrounded by her things made me hurt, the thought of not being surrounded by them somehow hurt worse. Three months after she died, I forced myself to start packing her things.
I started with the bedroom, her drawers, her side of the closet, her nightstand. Every item I touched felt like I was peeling away part of her existence. I didn’t throw anything away.
I couldn’t. Instead, I boxed them all up and moved them into the guest room. I told myself I’d figure out what to do with them later.
But deep down, I think I just needed her to still be somewhere in the house. Somewhere I could close the door and pretend she wasn’t completely gone. And when you’re surrounded by the pieces of the person you lost, moving forward feels like a betrayal.
I wasn’t ready to let go. I don’t even think I knew what letting go meant yet. All I knew was that every night I went to bed in that room alone, and it didn’t feel like healing.
It felt like surviving. It took me six full months after Nancy died to finally make the decision to sell her car. Up until then, it had just been sitting in the driveway, untouched.
The tires were starting to flatten a little and dust had gathered on the windshield. That car was a piece of her. Every time I passed by it, I felt like I was walking past her memory.
I would sometimes go out there late at night or early in the morning and just sit inside it. I wouldn’t even start the engine. I’d just sit in her seat, close the door, and breathe.
It still smelled like her. Her lip balm was still in the console. Her sunglasses were in the glove box…
