Not Your Average Love Story

I think it only fair to share a little bit about how Mickey and I came to be. From the beginning of our relationship, our story has been anything but traditional. Mick and I met when I was a young and naive 22-year-old going through a divorce from a marriage that I should have never entered. He was my neighbor and twenty-five years my senior. He was also going through a divorce. He had two preteen sons and a daughter who was a few years older than me. You can imagine the chatter that was started around town when he and I began dating. Headline: Young blonde dating older wealthy man. Cliche'.

Anyway, our relationship advanced rather quickly and within a few months we were living together and I began my new found career as a housewife. We were in love. We were different in many ways but enjoyed being with each other so much that our little differences faded away and we formed a team that could go up against anything thrown our way. It's a good thing, because there was no shortage of roadblocks in our relationship.

After eight years of dating, Mickey proposed to me on a weekend trip to New York City. Up until that point, I had finished nursing school and he had been through more than half a dozen major surgeries including bowel resections, a lung removal, and heart stenting. All of these close calls with death brought us closer and we never let any of these challenges hinder our future together. We traveled four to five times a year, hosted the best parties, and truly lived a life that we both felt fulfilled us.

Although Mickey was older than me and had been through his fair share of health scares, neither of us ever imagined that his time on earth would be so short. We had made plans for the next 20 years. He always made sure to see his doctors regularly and do his part to eat well and exercise. He had actually seen his cardiologist and primary doctor the week before we left on our last vacation, so when Mickey suffered his heart attack, even with all of his health history, I was actually in shock. I believed that he had many more years of life left. You can't die if you have plans made, right?

Unfortunately, life doesn't quite work like that. One thing that I am grateful for is that Mickey and I were very open about what would happen upon his passing. Over the years, he had encouraged me to get my degree and he taught me about business and life in general, so that I would always be financially independent. His biggest fear in life was that I would be left alone and he never wanted me to have to "put up with anyone's shit". Therefore, throughout our 15 year relationship, he tried to prepare me the best he could for what he saw was inevitable. I am thankful that he could see the importance, but there is no amount of planning that will ever prepare someone to lose their partner. There is a hole in my soul and it is deep. I don't think that there is any way to fill this hole, at least not until after we are reunited and that is what keeps me moving forward in life.