My mother left one side of the bed untouched for twenty-seven years

Dear Delyara, My father died when Mum was forty-nine. She never remarried. I always assumed she eventually used the whole bed because that is what people do when enough years pass. Today, while helping her move into a smaller flat at seventy-six, I stripped the sheets from her old double bed and noticed the mattress was almost new on Dad’s side. Her side had sunk deeply from decades of sleep. His side was firm. I asked her about it. She became embarrassed and said, “I suppose I stayed where I belonged.” Twenty-seven years. She had slept on one half of a bed because the other half still had an owner in her mind. I felt angry with Dad for being dead that long, which makes no sense. Then I felt angry with Mum for surrendering so much physical space to grief. She shrugged and said she never thought about it. That is the part I cannot stop thinking about. Some forms of mourning are not dramatic enough to be noticed even by the person doing them. They become posture. Which side you sleep on. Where you put your slippers. How far your hand travels in the dark before remembering there is no one there. Mum’s new flat has a smaller bed. Tonight, she rang me and complained she keeps feeling as though she might fall off the edge because she is not used to sleeping in the middle.