On that first morning of my first year of being alone, I woke up too early, and looked around the way I imagined my husband might have. I remember knowing completely that he was the love of my life, which means nothing that can be explained except maybe that I knew the back of his neck as well as the palm of his hands. It means that to this day I can still sometimes convince myself I smell him on pillows he never put his head on, that he watched my sisters grow up and on Friday nights he would watch Jeopardy! with my grandmother. I knew his family and loved them, love them still, miss them all the time; we had all the same friends and we knew we were going to hurt them, too, when we hurt each other. He was the person I woke up next to almost every day for what feels like my entire life, and I have slept better every night I’ve slept without him, but on that morning I knew I would never again have one night of rest now that we had left each other. Maybe it helps to know that I thought no one would be able to make me come like he did and in a way I was right. Or how I remembered that whenever I was on a plane with lots of turbulence I would think, I hope I survive the crash because I’m definitely going to want to tell him about it. He was, as of that morning, no longer the only person I would tell my stories to, or the first person I would tell them to. I didn’t know it yet but when he finally became a person I told no stories to at all I would think I had nothing left to say.