Same Cabin. Still Here.

What it feels like to return to a place you shared after loss

He just didn’t like s’mores.
We still talk about that every time.

There are moments in grief after losing someone you love when you go back to a place you once shared. You don’t really know what it will feel like until you get there. This is what it was like for me to return to a cabin my husband Gary and I stayed in years ago, and what I noticed about memory, presence, and carrying love forward.

I went back to a cabin at Potato Creek State Park. The exact same one Gary and I stayed in years ago. That trip was winter. Snow everywhere. Deep and quiet. I remember Gary hiking through it in shorts, lifting his knees high with each step and saying it was easier on his knees that way. Completely ridiculous, but just so Gary. We still laugh about that. The beds were so bad that we barely slept, so Gary and I ended up leaving early. That’s what I remember most from that cabin. Cold. Snow. No sleep. And Gary being Gary.

This time was different

It was spring. Sunny and windy in that way that makes you want to sit outside by the fire and stay a while. The kids and I stayed in the same cabin. I slept in the same room. The beds looked different, but I wasn’t taking chances. This time I brought an air mattress, and I stayed. Three nights.

That feels small, but it isn’t.

Last time I couldn’t stay. This time I could. I made it work in a way I couldn’t before. I didn’t leave when it got uncomfortable. I stayed in it.

He was still there

The fire pit is not right outside the cabin, so you have to walk to it. Last time we walked through snow to get there. This time it was dry ground, a slight breeze, and kids running ahead. The park added benches around the fire pit. Our roasting sticks have been upgraded and now hold two marshmallows each. The kids are older now and say the best things. Funny things. And sometimes I catch Gary in that. In a smile. In a laugh. In something they say that sounds just like him.

We roasted marshmallows again. Gary loved a perfectly golden one. He liked the chocolate. The graham crackers were fine. But s’mores? He did NOT like s’mores. Too sweet. Too messy. He always said it never really came together right. We still say that. Every time.

And when we do, he is just there.

Not in a big way. Not in a way that stops everything. Just there in the joke, in the words, in the remembering.

I saw cardinals everywhere on this trip. Blue jays too. We hiked through the woods, and I don’t even know if it was the same trails. It didn’t really matter. Because something about being there felt familiar and new at the same time.

Grief does something to places. They don’t stay in the past. They come with you. There is the version of that cabin where Gary is there, and the version where he is not. And somehow both are true at the same time. I felt that all weekend.

And maybe this is something I am still learning.

We don’t go back to find them.

We go back and realize they were never really left behind.

We carry them into the places we return to. Into the jokes. Into the stories. Into the way we still do things.

If you are living this kind of grief, where love and loss show up in the same space, you are not alone.

If you are finding yourself in places that feel full of memory, or wondering how to be in both of those truths at the same time, I understand that feeling.

If it would feel helpful to talk with someone who gets this kind of grief, I offer a free conversation called Holding the Ember. It’s just a space to share your story and be heard.

You don’t have to have anything figured out before you come.