It’s December 2020 and I will be, for the first time in 54 years, without my life partner, wife and lover for Christmas. I told her aunt (I guess my aunt too) in July that I didn’t think she would last to Christmas. She didn’t even make it to Thanksgiving - dying on November 18. One more month and we would have known each other for 55 years.

It was the summer of 2019 that we noticed that she was getting tired a lot, not sleeping for any great length at night. She was losing weight slowly 1-2 pounds a month. Her appetite was fading and she was eating less and less. The doctors were prescribing pills for appetite stimulation, pills for loss of sleep vitamins to give her more energy. We tried to get them find the cause instead of just trying to treat the symptoms. Covid didn’t help. Doctor visits were stretched over months and some visits were just telephone calls. To top it all off, she was diagnosed with beginning Parkinson’s Disease. Both hands would tremble so that at times she couldn’t control a computer mouse.

Her sleeping problems led to us not cuddling each other in bed. If I tried to cuddle her, she would wake and couldn’t get back to sleep. Some nights she would cry because she couldn’t get to sleep. On our anniversary we tried to cuddle. She scooted over to me and I put my left arm over and tried to cuddle her bottom. She didn’t have one. All I felt was loose skin – there was no flesh. My wife was dissolving before my eyes, Her biceps were nothing – you could discern each rib distinctly, Her hips were so bony it physically hurt me to cuddle her. For the last several years she also suffered from osteoporosis. I couldn’t hug her in bed – afraid I would break a rib.

In mid August she called out to me to come quickly. She was standing in the hall swaying. I grabbed her under her arms just as her legs gave way. From there on she couldn’t move more than a few steps before her legs gave out. It was a wheelchair from here on in.

In the middle of all this, I was having severe breathing problems. A heart catheterization procedure exposed 7 blockages in my heart -3 thee major ones. The surgeons wanted me to undergo heart bypass. I told them I couldn’t be in the hospital overnight because I was my wife’s primary caregiver. W decided on an outpatient catheterization procedure to insert 3 stents in late September. It worked but I wasn’t do any heavy lifting for some time.

In late October her legs gave out completely. She couldn’t stand. I had to lift her out of bed to put her in the wheelchair to go to the bathroom and then lift her onto the commode. She was complaining of pains in her lower back just above her hips. Sitting in a chair was painful lying in a bed was painful. She had me call 911 on November 4th. Two more weeks and she was gone.

We didn’t know what her illness was. Twice they had to drain fluid form her abdomen. The doctors were checking to find cancer cells in the fluid. It was after her death that I was told that they had just discovered metastatic breast cancer cells in the second draining. She had had a breast mastectomy in 2011. To understand the extent of her illness, she was just skin and bones at the end. Picture a Holocaust Survivor and that was my wife.

Now I’m alone. I miss my lifelong friend and lover. When I go to the grocery store I no longer get her favorite foods. I no longer can buy flowers that she so lovingly enjoyed. One of the last pieces of clothing that I bought her ( a floor length red robe) I’ve hung on a closet door. I hug that robe and cry not for her but for me. She is in a better place, a place I will eventually join if the good Lord will forgive me my sins.

I have family around so I am not without people who care for me. I’m sleeping single in a double bed to quote a line from a country song. I am not in danger of committing suicide. It’s against everything she and I believed in. On the other hand if I should contract a death dealing sickness, I wouldn’t be too upset. Life just doesn’t have that sparkle any more