I signed the offer.
After 26 years with the same company… through countless roles, promotions, challenges, leadership opportunities, late nights, hard lessons, growth, and more garbage-related passion than any normal person should probably admit…
I’ve accepted my dream job.
And I’m moving to Phoenix.
And I’m proud of myself.
Really proud.
Because this isn’t just another promotion.
This is the one.
The role every other role was preparing me for.
The opportunity I spent 26 years building toward — one lesson, one challenge, one promotion, and one leap of faith at a time.
And somewhere along the way, Marc became the person cheering for me through all of it.
Sometimes louder than I cheered for myself.
He believed in me fiercely.
The strange thing is… this was always part of the plan.
Just not yet.
We used to talk about doing this in a few years, after our daughter graduated.
Me taking the next big step.
Him slowing down a little.
A new chapter.
Warmer weather.
More time together.
He was supposed to be right beside me through all of this.
Cheering me on.
Making jokes while I stress-packed boxes.
Pretending he wasn’t emotional about leaving while absolutely being emotional about leaving.
This was supposed to be ours.
And now I’m preparing to do it without him.
That reality knocks the wind out of me sometimes.
I am ecstatic.
And heartbroken.
Proud.
And devastated.
Hopeful.
And grieving something so big I still can’t fully put words around it.
There is also so much ahead of me that I’ve been avoiding.
The basement.
The barn.
His things.
All of his things.
I have avoided the basement of my house for five months.
Five months.
I haven’t moved a coffee cup.
A piece of paper.
A sweatshirt.
Anything.
It feels emotionally territorial in a way I can barely explain.
I don’t want help… but I feel like I should.
I don’t want anyone else touching his things… but that seems unfair.
I don’t even want people down there… but that seems selfish.
And I know at some point I have to walk into it and start touching the life we built together.
I have to decide what stays.
What goes.
What gets packed away.
And I hate it.
Because some part of me feels like packing those things away is the final acknowledgment that he is gone.
Like I’m packing him away.
And the truth is… there is no one coming behind me to do it instead.
No future version of us.
No “when Marc gets home.”
No one else carrying the weight of deciding what happens to the life we built together.
It’s just me now.
Me opening boxes I don’t want to touch.
Me deciding what pieces of him stay with me.
Me learning, painfully, that surviving someone sometimes means becoming the sole keeper of an entire shared life.
And I am not ready for that.
But I’m starting to realize something difficult:
I never will be.
So I’m doing it anyway.
Not because I’m healed.
Not because this doesn’t hurt.
But because life is still moving forward, and somewhere inside all of this grief… I am too.
Some days I feel incredibly brave.
Other days I feel completely shattered.
At Marc’s funeral, I stood in front of a room full of people who loved him and promised that I would live big for both of us.
I asked them to do the same.
Not because any of us wanted this life.
But because loving him changed us.
And because the only thing worse than losing someone who lived so fully would be shrinking our own lives afterward.
So this is me trying.
Trying to keep moving.
Trying to keep building.
Trying to carry love and grief at the same time.
Trying to honor the life we planned, even if I now have to walk it without him beside me.
So for you, my love, I’m going to keep living big.
Just like I promised you I would.
