I cajoled the 911 operator, but weirdly, in the moment, I was really focused on being polite. I turned him on his side and tried to clear his airway. At one point I pulled on his ear to see if he would respond. I was surprised by how hard it was to tell. I kept asking if I should do CPR and she kept asking if he was responsive, if he was breathing. I went to get him a bowl to cough into, and then said, “that’s it, I’m calling 911.” And then he collapsed onto his knees and fell on the ground. At one point he went into the kitchen and looked out the glass door to the patio, and said “Oh. He was sitting on the couch at one point and I encouraged him to cough it up, whatever it was. I don’t remember the sequence of events very well. I made my way to get groceries, and when I got back, Steve came down the stairs, carrying a bunch of his sick-dude things - probably some Kleenexes, his thermometer, a seltzer can. he couldn't sleep, so we woke up and watched some 30 Rock together. I had to pull a cry face to get them to fill it, and when I got back to the car I was pretty proud of myself for badgering them into doing it. The doctor there prescribed him an antibiotic and said, “It’s either the flu or it’s not, so this will either work or it won’t.” We went to CVS and got the prescription filled right as they were closing. I made him get up off the couch and go to an urgent care. That Friday, he came home from work really sick.

The spectrum from happy to sad isn't a foot wide anymore - it's as far as your arms can stretch and then to the edges of the room and then up the block and over into the next neighborhood. Suddenly the range of the type of sad you can feel, to the type of happy you can feel, is busted open.

That sounds totally crazy to other people, but when you experience a loss like this, you get to see a really wild new amount of life. But: I have a cousin who's also a widow, and she told my sister that she's not sure if she'd bring her husband back. He’s missing Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Lawrence Lessig. He’s missing our cat Claudia’s turbulent adolescence. He’s missing an equality revolution in spaces around gender and sexual identity, race, police power, capital and class. He missed the opening with Cuba, which he would have been really stoked about. I’m not glad Steve died, not even a little. A: I’m not, and that’s kind of a crummy thing to say.Ī: Ha-ha, psych! I’m just messing with you.

The cost of living rachel ward