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Everything reminds him of her.
He can hear her laugh in the wind, her voice in the rustle of the leaves, the vivid colour of her hair in the last rays of sunshine. He watches every sunset sitting at the top of the hill, and the way the stars come out in the dark reminds him of that night on New Caprica, that night when they caught a break in each other's arms, how she loved staring at them. He never misses a night, as if by gazing at the stars, he can see into her eyes again.
Lee comes to help him build that cabin, because that's not a job that any man over sixty can do by himself, especially after almost breaking his back burying her, a task he'd insisted on doing himself. Other people come too. They want to help - out of pity, he thinks, but he doesn't have the strength to turn them away. They all ask how he's feeling. They think he's feeling. But it all went down in the ground with Laura. There's nothing, not even alcohol to drown into anymore.
There's a dent in his finger from decades of wearing that wedding band, and it's almost like there's a new mark, and it's Laura's ownership over him and his promise that he'd be with her forever. He used to inwardly laugh at people who thought there was an afterlife, and now wishes day and night for Laura to be there, sound and happy and waiting for him. But what eats at him when he lay awake and sleep refuses to take him, is that if there is an afterlife, it only takes those who believed. Those like Laura who didn't give up hope, who led people with the strength of their faith, not the people like him who questioned, who doubted, who only believed when she showed the way. And maybe, even if she waits, maybe he won't get to join her.
When he eventually allows them to, people come to pay their respects to Laura's tomb. Saul, Ellen, Doc Cottle, Lee, Helo sometimes with Sharon. Hera sits in front of the pile of rocks and stays silent, and for such an active child, it hits them all. He wonders what she's doing, if somehow she can communicate with Laura. They've shared visions in the past, the dying leader and the prophetic child, and he's well past doubting these things. Laura made him believe. So when the little girl comes again, he sits next to her, and they don't talk but he hopes that Laura can hear them.
He reads every book he's kept from Galactica, reads until he can't anymore. He reads Searider Falcon, from cover to cover, over and over, until the pages come off, until each of Laura's soft hums and witty comments as he read it to her in sickbay are burned into his memory. He still reads aloud, not to comfort her, not anymore, but to comfort himself. Sometimes, if he's lucky, it works, and that comfort is like the warm embrace of Laura's arms. So he never stops reading to her.
When he's too tired to do any of those things anymore, he thinks. He hurts his battered, weakly-beating heart with the thought of seeing her again, thinks about what he'd say, what he'd do if he got to see her smile again, to glimpse at the playful twinkle in her eyes, to see her doubled down in laughter.
And then he gets to see that again, all of it, because despite his doubts and fears, he's joined her, and he can feel again. She was waiting for him, longing for him, because even in the afterlife, everything reminded her of him.