When I first joined the ranks of the spouses of the dearly departed, I achingly longed for my old normal to return. I wanted my husband, my best friend, to come back so desperately it made me physically ill.  It was so hard, and so strange not to have him by my side.  We were together for a long while and in all that time, all I ever had to do was reach out and he was just there. It is very empowering to feel like someone always has your back and he always had mine. I felt like I was Queen of the World.

We worked together, played together, loved passionately and fiercely and built an incredible life together. Oh, yeah, by most people's standards we didn't have a pot to piss in, so to speak, but that never mattered because we had so much love. So. Much. Love.  I think if you measured wealth by love and happiness, we would have been the Bill and Melinda Gates of contentment. This was the life I had always dreamed of living and I wanted my charmed life to go on forever.

When Dave was alive, it bothered me sometimes that I couldn't help but feel that anything that good, that perfect, had to have a kink in it somewhere, so I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. There was always this shadowy something lurking in the background, something unnamed, unformed, just at the edge of our reality. Unfortunately, my intuition was right. That kink, that shadowy something was cancer. Cancer took Dave away and not I am left here without him.  Fuck you, Cancer, I hate you!

What do I do now?