They Say 'Move On' Like I Know Where to Go

The house still smelled like her—lavender and old books, sun-warmed cotton and something faintly citrus. He hadn’t opened the windows since the day she left. Or maybe since the day she stopped breathing. Time had become viscous, days slipping past like water through fingers, leaving behind only salt and ache.

Liam sat on the edge of the bed they used to share, staring at the closet. Her clothes still hung inside, neatly arranged, untouched. People had told him it was unhealthy, that he needed to “move on.” But no one told him where “on” was supposed to lead. There was no road map out of love. No guide to surviving the silence of a life interrupted.

“She wouldn’t want you to be like this,” they said.

They didn’t know her. Not really.

She had been all laughter and light, an orchestral swell in his otherwise muted world. Anna hadn’t just lived—she had filled rooms, like music, like color. When she walked in, even tired, the air changed. And when she smiled at him, that rare, knowing smile she saved only for him, the world paused in reverence.

He remembered the last time she smiled like that.

It was raining, a rare warm rain in late October. They had danced on the porch barefoot, like kids, like fools. She’d laughed when he slipped, pulling him up by the collar of his wet shirt. Her hair clung to her face, and she pushed it away, grinning, pressing her forehead to his.

“We’re ridiculous,” she had whispered.

“We are,” he agreed. “Let’s stay ridiculous forever.”

But forever had been short.

The accident had come like a thief in the dark—unwarned, undeserved, unfixable. One moment he was texting her to pick up milk. The next, he was identifying her body under fluorescent lights that buzzed too loudly and made the world tilt sideways.

He didn’t cry that day. Not then. He didn’t have the shape for grief yet. That came later, in pieces.

It came in the grocery store when he reached for her favorite tea. It came on his birthday when the mailbox was empty. It came in the mirror, when he saw himself still standing, still breathing, and hated that it was possible.

And every time, someone said it.

“You need to move on.”

Move on, like she was a missed bus. Like grief was a neighborhood you moved out of. Like his love had an expiration date that had finally come.

He’d smile politely. Nod. Say, “I’m trying.” But he wasn’t. Not really. Not in the way they meant.

He was trying, though. Trying to wake up. Trying to eat. Trying to live a day without forgetting and then remembering all over again. Trying to find something worth stepping into when every step moved him further from the last day she was alive.

Moving on sounded like betrayal. Like closing a chapter he hadn’t finished reading. Like saying she didn’t matter anymore.

But what if moving on didn’t mean forgetting? What if it meant carrying? What if the destination wasn’t “away from her,” but “forward with her”?

That thought came slowly, like a sunrise. Soft. Quiet. Almost imperceptible.

One morning, he opened the window.

Just a crack.

The wind stirred the curtains. The scent of rain drifted in, the kind she loved. He didn’t cry. Not then. Instead, he made a cup of her favorite tea and sat on the porch. Listened to the wind. Closed his eyes.

Maybe “move on” didn’t mean leaving her behind.

Maybe it meant learning to live with the ache. Learning to live through the absence. To find her not just in the photos and the clothes, but in the part of himself that had changed because of her. The part that still knew how to dance in the rain. That still smiled at stupid jokes. That still paused for beauty.

He would never “get over” Anna.

But maybe—just maybe—he could grow around the hole she left.

A few weeks later, he boxed up some of her things. Kept the scarf that still smelled like her. Donated the rest to a shelter she used to volunteer at.

He started walking to the coffee shop again. The barista didn’t ask where he’d been. Just smiled, handed him the usual. One cream, two sugars.

There was a girl with kind eyes who sometimes sat by the window. She reminded him of Anna, but not too much. Just enough to not look away.

He wasn’t ready for new beginnings. But he was beginning to believe they might be possible. That life could stretch forward without erasing what came before.

People still told him to move on.

Now, he just nodded and thought:

I am.

Just not in the way you think.