A week ago I closed on a new town home and the next day moved away from the place where my only son Brady died of suicide at age 16 in October 2016. I had done considerable prep work to move starting a few months after he died and at one point had a date when I planned to list my home for sale. But eventually I decided it wasn’t likely to make enough difference to justify all the effort and cost so I canceled my plans to move.

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Part of the problem was that I couldn’t decide where to go. I had been planning to relocate closer to my then-girlfriend, which made sense at the time. But when she cut me loose five months after Brady died it seemed to make about as much sense to stay where I was.

Probably the biggest reason I decided not to move was that being in a different place didn’t seem to have a major effect on how I felt. Certainly I sometimes had bad feelings when I entered Brady’s old room or was working in the back yard near where he died. But generally I was about as sad when I was gone on vacation for a week as I was when I was at home.

Being in a different place didn’t seem to have a major effect on how I felt.

If it wasn’t going to make me much less grief-stricken, then why engage in a massive project like moving? That’s what I asked myself, and the answer was that for the moment I wouldn’t do it. Then a few months ago things started lining up so that moving seemed to make more sense. So I went ahead with it.

The Effect of Moving on Grief

To this point, it’s been about what I expected as far as helping me deal with the loss of my son. That is, I feel slightly better, maybe. I don’t feel the stab of pain that often hit when I looked out into the back yard or thought about Brady sitting on the sofa and playing his Xbox. There aren’t quite as many reminders of his life and, more painfully, his death.

I am not sure it makes enough difference to justify all the expense and months of backbreaking labor involved in selling one place, buying another and now jamming a four-bedroom house worth of stuff into a two-bedroom town home. Still, every little bit helps. With the move now complete I’m grateful to feel even the tiniest easing of the black hopeless despair that has gripped me for so much of the last 21 months.

I haven’t encountered any poster on a grief forum who said they felt like it was a big mistake to move.

I’m passing this on because I know from exchanging messages and posts with other loss survivors that moving to a new home is often something that bereaved people consider. I’ve tried to keep track and as best I can recall I haven’t encountered any poster on a grief forum who said they felt like it was a big mistake to move, which is another reason I eventually went ahead with my plans to relocate.

Like other bereaved movers, I can also report that after a week it doesn’t feel like it was a mistake. Of course, the problem I’m dealing with is not about real estate. I never thought that a real estate solution was likely to make a profound difference. But, again, any improvement however slight is nice. More than nice.

A Dearth of Research

As usual, before writing this post I looked for relevant research. I didn’t come up with anything. There doesn’t seem to have been any scientific study of whether moving to a new home can be an effective grief coping strategy.

Searching Google Scholar for “moving to a new home” and “grief” turned up a couple of possible hits, one from 1987 and one from 1973. However, based on the abstracts neither appeared to focus on the effects of relocating on grief. I was unable to obtain the full text to learn more. Searching for the same terms in the psychology research database at my local public library, which doesn’t go back as far, turned up no hits at all.

Moving possibly can help with your grief, although it may not make a profound difference.

At the moment, this looks like an area without any data, which is unfortunate because, as noted, it’s something that many bereaved people consider as a coping mechanism. Since anecdotal evidence is all we have, that’s going to have to do for now. And the anecdotal evidence, as best I can tell, is positive. Moving possibly can help with your grief, although it may not make a profound difference.

Seeking incremental improvement, I should say, is a central theme of Grief Science. There’s no chance of our loved ones returning to life, which is perhaps the one event that could completely alleviate our suffering. Absent that miracle, we’re left with chipping away at the mountain of sadness and yearning. Moving appears to knock a chip off, albeit at much higher cost than other strategies.

Saying Goodbye

The last thing I did last Tuesday night before walking away for the last time was to go into the back yard and kneel on the spot where Brady died and where I tried to revive him. I don’t pray so I just communed with him for a moment.

I thought about how much I missed him and how sorry I was that he was gone. I relived the worst moments of that night. I cried some there in the darkness on my knees. Then I  got up and left. I looked back, mostly because it seemed like something I should do, but I kept going.

I looked back, mostly because it seemed like something I should do, but I kept going.

I don’t imagine I will ever be in or see that spot again. I also don’t see much chance I’ll ever forget that spot any  more than I will forget Brady, even if I live to be 100. He’s my only son, after all. Right now, the overriding problem I have is being able to think of anything except him and his death. If moving to a different house can help me focus on the present and not so much on the past, that will be a help, I hope.

Thanks as always for reading, commenting, liking, sharing and subscribing. I’m sorry for the losses that brought all of us here and hope we can each get a moment of peace today.

Postscript

It’s now been over four and a half months since I wrote the above and nearly five months since I moved. I’m following up with this P.S. because I think what has happened since is worth sharing.

What I’ve found is that as time goes by the positive effects of moving have grown stronger. Moving, I’ve decided now, has been a bigger benefit than anticipated.

I think it may be that it takes more than a week or so for the benefits to become apparent. When I noticed little difference in my grief symptoms while on short vacations, it could have been because I wasn’t giving it enough time.

As noted above, a week after the move I wasn’t sure it had helped much, if at all. But about six weeks after moving, it occurred to me that I really was feeling noticeably less despairing. After thinking about it, I attributed this improvement to not living in the house where Brady died. I guess it just took a while to show up.

In any event, the view from nearly five months on is that moving was a significant help, considerably more helpful than I expected.

I remain sorry for the losses that brought each of us here. And whether or not you decide to move to a new home, I hope you get some peace today and every day.