The moving truck had pulled away hours ago. The new house—a charming Victorian with the yellow door that Alice had always dreamed of—was filled with a chaotic maze of cardboard boxes.
Elias stood in the middle of the living room, holding a small, battered shoebox. It wasn’t heavy, physically. It contained a watch, a half-finished letter, and a dried boutonniere from a prom twenty years ago. But to Elias, it weighed a thousand pounds.
“Eli?” Alice called from the kitchen. “Champagne is popped! Come toast to our new chapter!”
Her voice was bright, full of the future. Elias tried to smile, but he felt anchored to the floor. It had been five years since his brother, Leo, had died. Five years was supposed to be the “safe zone,” the time when people stopped asking “how are you doing?” with that tilted head and hushed tone.
A friend had told him recently, “It’s great to see you finally moving on. It’s like the old Elias is back.”
But looking at the box, Elias knew that friend was wrong. He wasn’t “back.” The old Elias died the same night Leo did.
He sat down on a stack of books. The text he had read earlier that morning drifted through his mind. People always promised that time would heal all wounds, that the sharp edges of loss would smooth out until you barely noticed them. But grief isn’t something you get over. It wasn’t a flu or a bad breakup.
He looked at the watch in the box. Grief doesn’t shrink with time. It was exactly as large today as it was the day the police knocked on their door. The silence Leo left behind hadn’t grown quieter; Elias had just learned to hear other things over it.
Alice appeared in the doorway, two flutes in hand. She saw the box and her smile softened. She didn’t tell him to put it away. She didn’t tell him he should be happy. She simply sat down beside him on the books and rested her head on his shoulder.
“It’s heavy today?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah,” Elias whispered. “It becomes a weight around your heart.”
“Then we don’t have to unpack it yet,” she said. “We can just sit with it.”
Elias took a deep breath. He realized then that the “new chapter” wasn’t about erasing the past chapters. It was about integration. He wasn’t leaving Leo behind in the old apartment. He had to bring the loss with him.
You have to learn how to carry it into every new chapter you enter.
He stood up, taking the shoebox with him. He walked over to the mantle of the new fireplace—the heart of their new home—and placed the box right in the center. It didn’t match the decor. It looked out of place among the fresh paint and optimistic champagne glasses. But it belonged there.
“To the house,” Elias said, raising his glass, his other hand resting on the box.
“To us,” Alice answered. “And to everything we carry.”
Elias drank. The weight was still there, pressing against his chest, heavy and undeniable. But as he looked at Alice and the sun streaming through the windows of their new life, he realized he was strong enough to carry it.
