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"The friend I mentioned in Monday&amp;#039;s blog is still in a state of shock to some degree. He&amp;#039;s posted here and there to our online community and to Facebook as well, reassuring us that he&amp;#039;s eating and surrounded by relatives and friends. He also mentioned something that I have firsthand experience with: he keeps waking up, expecting his wife to be there and her side of the bed is empty. One of his friends told him (quite helpfully, I might add) that her therapist recommended sleeping on the opposite side of the bed when she lost her husband, so that when she woke up, the empty side was always hers, and didn&amp;#039;t have that same emotional gut-punching impact at first glance. Nothing can really negate that kind of loss, but these little detours we take can give us a few seconds or minutes to gather our wits about us before the emotional tidal wave washes over us. Strangely enough, I did this all on my own. Somehow, in the weeks and months after Peter left, I started gravitating to the other side. Maybe it&amp;#039;s because the lamp is over there. Maybe the angle was better to see the TV. I&amp;#039;m not really sure why, but I slept better over there. Maybe it was just me, taking back that space and calling it mine instead of his. For whatever reason, it had the desired effect - I didn&amp;#039;t wake up in the morning with my first thought being &amp;quot;he&amp;#039;s gone&amp;quot;. It helped. It was a little thing, maybe even an insignificant thing to some people, but to me, it gave me a few moments after waking before I had to think about it, and sooner or later, I didn&amp;#039;t think about it at all when I woke up. And then I skipped a whole day before I thought about it. Now it&amp;#039;s just a fact of life, but in those first days, weeks and months, those little tricks helped me through.  What tricks worked for you? Maybe we could compile a list! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a46825/switching-sides/>