I was in my late husband Tom’s garage—a place that had once been his sanctuary, but now felt like a cavern of memories I wasn’t sure I was ready to face. The space was overwhelming: tools scattered across workbenches, boxes stacked haphazardly, and decades of forgotten odds and ends collecting dust
.
For weeks I had avoided it. Each time I thought about stepping inside, grief tightened its grip, reminding me that sorting through his things meant admitting he was truly gone. But grief has a way of demanding confrontation, and that day, I forced myself to begin.
At first, the task was oddly tender. I found remnants of Tom’s tinkering—a quirky homemade tool, an old fishing lure, bits and pieces of projects he’d started and never finished. His hands had shaped so much of our home and our life together. Touching those objects felt like brushing against him again.
Then, buried beneath a pile of paint cans, I stumbled across something I wasn’t prepared for: a small, battered box. Inside, neatly arranged, were dozens of keys. Each one was tagged with a woman’s name I didn’t recognize.
In that instant, the garage no longer felt like a place of memory. It felt like a place of secrets.
