I am deeply moved that fellow members of PC have taken this much interest in my situation and continued this long in their support of me. It is beyond what I thought possible or likely from peers on an online support group. Thank you - all of you - for your kind and encouraging posts. You understand so much.

seesaw - I have to correct your impression that I am a saint. I am not. Yes, I did a lot for my s.o. - probably more than most wives do for terminally ill husbands. Our circumstances were somewhat unusual. He was quite elderly. I was almost 18 years younger than him and had worked as a caregiver all my life, from age 17, mostly caring for elders. My skill set (from being a nurse's aid and then a nurse) happened to correspond beautifully to exactly what he needed in a caregiver. Most men his age have spouses who are, themselves, too old to do what I was still capable of doing. Most women my age would have had jobs to go to and other family commitments, like caring for their own parents and helping with grandchildren. I went on SSDI 7 years ago because depression was undermining my ability to have a career. That was right at the time that he was starting to need help with self-care. After losing a series of jobs, it was rewarding to me to still be able to practice my "trade" in the context of caring for just one person. I was lonely, and being with him felt better than sitting alone in my own apartment. I suffered from recurrent mood swings that he was tolerant of. We kind of met each other's needs. Our relationship was turbulant. (That's why we had separate apartments.) We got angry at each other a lot, but we had this long history of always making up and somehow staying "in love." (He was a great apologizer. He always could manage to smooth my ruffled feathers.)

Emotionally, I was probably more dependent on him than he was on me. I can be difficult - to put it mildly - but he always saw past that to whatever it was in me that he loved. I was steadfast in caring for him because he was steadfast in loving me. Emotionally, he could easily move past hard feelings and quickly return to a positive frame of mind. Unlike me, he didn't dwell on hurts or grievances. For him each day was brand new and unblemished by whatever antagonism had existed the day before. I tend to hold on to hard feelings and get "stuck" in the mire of negativity when things don't go my way. He was naturally a cheerful person. I'm a chronic depressive. I loved being in the sunshine of his presence. Enduring my mood swings would try the patience of a saint. We nurtured each other in the way we each needed. He was a great hugger. I was free to leave him anytime I felt like it . . . and no one would have faulted me. But I was always drawn to being with him because that was where my soul could best warm itself when it was chilled by those frosty winds that frequently blew through my interior world. It was he who had the saintly ability to not only forgive, but to utterly forget, my harsh words and ill-temper, once a quarrel was past. He told me one time that a nurse caring for him in the hospital asked him, "Is your girlfriend cranky?" (She wasn't the first to make that observation.) He said that he told her I was "actually very nice." My own dear mother would have begged to differ. His response to that nurse surprised me. He knew my faults as well as anyone did. But he felt they were outweighed by my virtues. I was touched to find that he thought so well of me. In his eyes I appeared as the person I wished I was. That's not who I always was. He thought I was beautiful, inside and out. It's wonderful to be thought of that way. If I gave a lot to him, it was because I got a lot from him.

Even now I still feel warmed by the high regard he had for me . . . by how much he believed in me. He seemed to think that I hung the moon. He believed I could fix anything. I was moved to try and justify that faith he had in me.