The Widow’s Hollow
I got a new bed
I called it my Widow’s Hollow. I had lain so flat and so still in our bed in the months, now years, following my husband’s death, while subsisting on white wine and chocolate, that a deep well formed in the mattress.
We’d bought the frame 25 years ago, when our second son was born, choosing a super-king so there was enough room for all four of us and the dog. We’d taken it apart, shipped, and rebuilt it across every move between countries and continents. Despite it being big enough for an entire family, my Widow’s Hollow was on the very edge of the bed, and not only because Cleo, my miniature dachshund, takes up a surprisingly large amount of space.
I couldn’t lie on Mike’s side of the bed, let alone sleep on it. Every morning, for the two years between him dying and me making a conscious decision to let his spirit go, I would reach across the bed to hold his hand and start the day with a chat.
I flipped the mattress every which way until there were springs sticking into me whichever way around it was placed. It was time to get a new mattress.
Walking past a fancy furniture store, I saw a 70%-off closing-for-renos sale. Everything on display had to go. There was a stunning bed in the window. It was super-king sized, so the mattress would fit my bed. Perfect.
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I also fell a little in love with the bed frame. It was like a spaceship, the mattress sitting on a wider base, with built-in storage and lights, so I wouldn’t need bedside tables, side lamps, or the ugly ramp that saves Cleo’s back from the jump on and off the bed. But I hadn’t even considered giving up the bed frame. It was our bed. Where the magic happened. It was memories of the kids growing up. I’d spent a third of my life there for the last 25 years, and more like half of the last two years.
The thought of replacing it floored me. Another grief bolt from the blue. I went home and took to my bed to think about it.
I looked around my redecorated room. Everything was fresh and new. Nothing was the same as when Mike lived here. The bed frame had held decades of happy memories. It was also where Mike lay awake through the final months of unrelenting insomnia, and it held the agony of his death. There is no us now. Just me. It was time to let it go.
I went back to the store. The salespeople looked at me as if I were a little deranged. They weren’t wrong. A designer bed frame at 70% off, a one-off? It had sold in the 48 hours I’d spent thinking about it.
I went home devastated again. Having worked through the emotions of getting rid of the bed frame, I couldn’t go back to sleeping in it. I looked online. The full price of the designer bed was way beyond my budget. But I’d already imagined it in my room, and no other bed frame would do. I slept on the mattress on the floor while I waited for GUS (the Great Universal Spirit) to come up with a solution.
Regular readers know that Mike’s posthumous love language is second-hand furniture. I’d only been on the floor for a week before Facebook Marketplace came good. The exact same bed, barely used, at the 70%-off sale price.
I sleep across it diagonally
Queen ween
