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.