I Still Buy His Favorite Cereal. He's Been Gone for Years

I reach for it every Saturday morning—the bright yellow box with the cartoon tiger on the front. Third shelf down, second from the left. I don’t even read the label anymore. I could find it blindfolded. My hand moves before I think, before I remember. Or maybe I do remember, and that’s why I keep doing it.

It’s been seven years since David died.

He loved this cereal. Not in the casual way most people like breakfast food. It was a ritual for him. Saturday mornings meant sleeping in, padding into the kitchen barefoot, coffee for me, cereal for him. Always the same. He’d eat straight from the box sometimes, crouched by the counter like a kid caught red-handed. I used to roll my eyes. He’d flash that crooked smile and shrug.

“You love me anyway,” he’d say, mouth half full.

I did. I still do.

When he was first gone, everything in the house felt haunted. His shoes by the door. The worn spot on the couch. His laugh, trapped somewhere in the walls. I couldn’t bear to throw anything out. I remember opening the pantry one day and seeing that stupid cereal box. Half full. I slammed the door shut and sobbed in the hallway for twenty minutes.

But then I went out and bought another box.

It made no sense. He wasn’t going to eat it. He wasn’t going to come down the stairs, sleepy-eyed and smiling. But something about seeing it there brought me a sliver of comfort. Like he wasn’t entirely gone. Like part of him might still exist in the silly, everyday choices we once made together.

At first, I told myself it was temporary. A coping mechanism. Just until the worst of it passed. But the years have gone on, and the habit remains.

It’s not about denial. I know he’s gone. I signed the death certificate. I scattered his ashes in the bay where we first kissed on a chilly spring evening, standing on a creaky old dock with trembling hands. I’ve done the grief counseling, read the books, sat in the quiet rooms with strangers who all wore the same hollow look I carried for so long.

But that cereal box—it's more than wheat and sugar. It’s a symbol of something that once made life feel complete. And maybe, in my own quiet rebellion against forgetting, I keep buying it to remember.

Last week, the cashier gave me a curious look.

“Got kids at home?” she asked with a polite smile, scanning the box.

I smiled back and nodded. I didn’t have the heart to explain.

Because how do you tell someone that love can outlive a heartbeat? That sometimes grief lingers not as tears, but as small acts of preservation—buying their favorite cereal, keeping their mug on the shelf, hearing their voice in songs that play on the radio.

The world moved on after David. My friends returned to their routines. The casseroles stopped coming. The calls slowed down. People tried their best, I know that. But grief is not a crisis to be solved; it's a companion that walks beside you, changes its shape, and whispers when no one else is listening.

In time, I started to live again. I went back to work. I painted the guest room. I even went on a few dates, all of which ended with awkward smiles and the mutual understanding that I wasn’t quite ready. Maybe I never will be, not in the way people think I should.

Some wounds don’t close. They simply become part of your architecture.

Today, after unpacking groceries, I placed the box in the same spot on the shelf, facing forward. I paused a moment, tracing the edges of the cardboard with my fingers. It’s funny how something so ordinary can hold so much weight.

I still don’t eat it. I donate most of the boxes to a local shelter every couple of months. It’s not wasteful, I tell myself. Maybe some kid will grow to love it like David did. Maybe they’ll crouch by the counter, grinning through a mouthful, and remind someone of everything beautiful about loving someone wholeheartedly.

I think David would like that.

He once told me, on a particularly quiet night, “It’s not the big things I’ll miss if I go first. It’s the little ones. Saturday mornings. The way you look when you’re reading. That dumb cereal.”

He knew, somehow. Or maybe we all do. That in the end, it’s the tiny threads—soft, seemingly insignificant—that hold the fabric of our lives together.

And so I keep buying his favorite cereal.

Because love doesn’t disappear. It transforms. It lives in memory. In ritual. In the gentle, silent moments we hold onto when everything else fades.