Moving on from the life we shared

Reflections on following your gut and taking a leap

The snowy Lake Michigan, April 2018

In April of 2018, 15 months after Brad died, I made the decision to leave Detroit, the place I called home for the previous 8 years. It wasn’t thought out or planned. It was an impulse. A gut reaction. A risk. A bold and possibly irresponsible move that began the ripple effect of the beautiful life I have today.

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I stood in the living room of the 100-year-old cottage. It had a slight smell of mildew and the carpet was stained and worn. Monotone colors of wood were everywhere. The walls, the ceilings, the cabinets, the barren trees outside.

To anyone else, the house would have been dull and lifeless. To me, it was a lifeline.

I peered out the large kitchen window at a small lake.

I wasn’t looking to move. I had friends and family and a job. A support system.

But the night before, I scrolled through Zillow in an attempt to fill the void of my now too-quiet loft. I leaned against the kitchen island, next to a barstool that hadn’t been occupied in a year.

This loft, which used to be so full — full of music, of laughter, of dreams — felt empty.

Every day was the same: avoid.

Avoid the stares, the looks of pity, the “I’m sorrys.” They say not to make any big decisions early in grief, but I was tired of avoiding my previously loved life.

And there, at my fingertips, seemed the answer. Or at least an answer. A rental listing for an old cottage on a lake.

I called in sick the next morning and made the 4-hour trek north, watching the city skyline shrink to a memory in my review mirror. Skyscrapers were replaced with towering pine trees. Chatting pedestrians with chirping birds.

I didn't think about the logistics of what it meant to uproot my Detroit existence. To live in a tiny rural town with strangers. To handle winters alone, shoveling feet of snow from the driveway just to get food.

I just drove, pulled towards a feeling — and a place — I couldn’t quite describe.

I showed up to my appointment two hours early and headed to Lake Michigan, a couple miles up the road. Even though flowers were blooming further south, the chill in the April air stunted my breath as flurries danced around me.

Scouring for rocks, my fingers went numb, but I didn’t care. Over and over, I judiciously scooped up stones with brightly colored patterns before the water washed them away for good, tossing the rejects back to emerge at a later time.

There was something calming about the act, and I felt something I hadn’t in a long time: peace.

I was accustomed to being alone since Brad died. Forced to independently continue a life that had been built for two. It was a lonely existence, surviving in a world built for couples. For families. For love.

Here, walking along the rocky shoreline, I was alone, but somehow, not lonely.

I threw a small blue rock into the lake and watched as the ripples extended out and into the horizon. One tiny splash and its effects were unending.

I wondered about my life since Brad died. Frozen in time, while the world around kept spinning. His things, like my life, untouched.

Back at the house, among the mildew and the stained carpet and the endless shades of beige, I knew.

It was time to make a ripple.

“I’ll take it,” I said.

The House Before:

The House in Progress:

The House After:

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It's Not You, Detroit. It's Me

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