Hm. I am still not sure why I am doing this. Sure, I've had friends suggest it, but I don't believe I am much of a writer. The only part of my creative writing class in high school that I was good at was the stream of consciousness writings. I am not sure I have anything to add to the widow blogs already out there- there are some really good ones- Snickollet and CrashCourseWidow come to mind, GeePatty and FullShneedAhead as well.

So why write? To get my thoughts out? I journal already.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning...

God, I loved my husband. The hardest part of this journey, besides the obvious figuring out of how the fuck to live my life without him, has been to avoid canonizing him. I have a hard time convincing myself that anyone loved the way we did, that anyone was as amazing as he was. His friends don't help in this regard. He really was exceptional- many people said he was the smartest, the funniest, the wittiest person they knew.

And I got be married to him for seven years.

Overall, they were good years. He was a good man, honest, decent. Funny as hell. Straightforward and secure in himself, but not arrogant. For example: after much fertility testing after trying to conceive for over a year, we discovered his sperm... sucked. There were plenty of them, but their shape was all messed up. The doctors called me and said we basically had no chance to conceive on our own, and we would need IVF with a special additional technique called ICSI, where they take individual sperm and inject them into the retrieved eggs. I had to go tell J that his sperm... sucked. I went to his lab, and said the doctors had called with the results of his latest semen analysis. I said, 'unfortunately, your morphology is really, really low, and we have very little chance of conceiving on our own.' His response? 'Well, good. Now we know what the problem is. Are there things we can do to get pregnant with my crappy sperm?' See? So rational, so unthreatened.

So there I am, just over 18 months ago, making love to my husband. I'm on top, as I often was. It was 5am, and we'd been sleeping in twin beds at his parents' house, our 2 1/2 year old son in the next room. And he is getting close to orgasm, but then he... slows down a bit. And I look down at him and he looks funny. I say his name, and he does not respond. And then his right arm lashes out, towards the lamp, towards the phone. And his left arm comes across his body, and it is shaking. I keep saying his name, each time with increasing urgency. And then it occurs to me that maybe he is having a seizure. So I crawl off of him and try to turn him on his side, because I have read somewhere that this is what you do when someone has a seizure. He is extremely heavy and difficult to move. At this point, I am begging him, 'Baby? Baby, what's wrong?' And I think I started screaming for help at that point. I began CPR and screamed for help. His parents came in and his dad took over the CPR. I was crawling around on the floor, looking for underpants. I was dizzy. I finally figure out I should call 911.

I cannot finish this right now. Some things are too exhauting, even 18 months out. But, that was the beginning of my journey as a widow prodigy. That was the morning my husband died.