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"Newlyweds with a baby on the way, writer Donna Freydkin and her husband lived in bliss. Then he got sick&amp;amp;mdash;very sick&amp;amp;mdash;and for the next 17 months, they took care of each other. His most lasting gift? Showing Donna she could go on&amp;amp;mdash;without him. Pictures of Donna and Justin, and their son Alex, displayed along with Justin&amp;#x27;s cashmere hat and bike shoes A little over three years ago, I was giddy, fearless, and madly in love. My husband, Justin, and I were soulmates&amp;amp;mdash;he profoundly got me in a way no one else ever had. Our son was due December 25; Justin and I were enjoying our final childless months. But someone, somewhere was laughing. Only the joke was on us. In November, Justin learned he had a brain tumor. In January, Alex, our baby boy, arrived. And on April 5, 2012, 17 months after my husband&amp;#x27;s diagnosis, a ghostly, cadaverous version of him passed away. Today, after everything I&amp;#x27;ve been through, my friends tell me I am strong, powerful, stalwart: a pillar of hope and optimism. I&amp;#x27;m finally starting to believe that&amp;#x27;s true. When Justin got sick that fall, it happened suddenly. He was having dizzy spells, which we figured were nothing. Then, over lunch at our favorite restaurant one day, he clutched the side of the booth and nearly fell. We lumbered over to the E.R., with me nine months pregnant. They sent him home and said to follow up with an MRI. &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re not going to die,&amp;quot; the attending physician told my laughing husband. But two days later the MRI film showed, clear and distinct as the lights on the Empire State Building, a big red ball. It&amp;#x27;s odd, the reaction you have to a brain-tumor diagnosis. The news seems absurd in its sheer magnitude. I expected to feel shock and disbelief, sure, and there was plenty of it. But also denial. We were 38 and 39, living in the greatest city in the world&amp;amp;mdash;New York&amp;amp;mdash;in a cute apartment with a backyard. I had always marched through life, and my husband and I were strong, vibrant. Nothing tragic could happen to us. &amp;quot;I expect to get this thing outta there and be up and running soon,&amp;quot; Justin told everyone. And no one bought it more than me. Up until then, Justin Williams had jaywalked through life. We&amp;#x27;d met on a blind date and clicked over something no one but us understood: our joint, bizarre affinity for Khia&amp;#x27;s foulmouthed song &amp;quot;My Neck, My Back.&amp;quot; Justin had a sharp eye and great taste. There we&amp;#x27;d sat, me in my skinny jeans, him in a John Varvatos button-down, drinking Vouvray in a vegetarian restaurant in Midtown, rapping the song together. Four years later, he designed my engagement and wedding bands. He helped me pay off my mountain of credit card debt, instilling in me both financial freedom and a fear of being beholden to anyone ever again. When I cooked, I&amp;#x27;d cut corners and shorten recipes, resulting in mediocre dishes that tasted slightly off. Justin taught me that it was worth using every pot and mixing bowl for creations that would impress a master chef. An engineer, he could dismantle anything; one Valentine&amp;#x27;s Day he installed an illegal washer and dryer in our apartment. Justin had his first brain surgery a month before our son was born. We acted like it was a tonsillectomy. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m ready to get out of here,&amp;quot; he told me in recovery, minutes after they&amp;#x27;d sawed his skull open, removed the foreign growth, and stitched him back up. He came home after four days, a slim incision in his head where they&amp;#x27;d operated. We celebrated his fortieth birthday with a dinner at Per Se, Justin slightly weaker and unable to drink his beloved Brunello. But the surgery was the past. Our kid was our future. &amp;quot;We&amp;#x27;re going to get through this,&amp;quot; Justin repeated. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ll be better than ever.&amp;quot; And for a time he was. Baby Alex arrived in January, after a grueling labor that ended in an emergency C-section, with Justin there every second. After the surgery he was mostly his old bike-riding self, off from work and with the time and&amp;amp;mdash;at first&amp;amp;mdash;the energy to be a fully involved dad. He sleep-trained our son, got him on a feeding schedule, and took him on adventures to parks, while I interviewed celebrities like Kate Hudson and Ashley Judd for my job at USA Today. I was preening that I had a husband who gamely changed diapers and rubbed Orajel on our son&amp;#x27;s swollen gums. We pretended the tumor had been a bad dream. Then, in March, the dizzy spells returned. The tumor had grown back. Justin&amp;#x27;s doctors planned his second surgery, which went well. We marched onward; he began radiation treatments. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#x27;s make a pact,&amp;quot; I told Justin. &amp;quot;No brain surgeries for a year.&amp;quot; NEXT: The Summer That Followed &amp;amp;#187; Justin and Donna at their wedding, in May 2010 We spent a summer in Austin, in the house Justin had built on land his mother left him. We bickered about groceries and dog walking, devoured Mexican food, took Alex swimming. In the fall we returned to Manhattan and learned the tumor had grown again. We were sitting in the sterile medical office when his neuro-oncologist walked in and gave us the news: stage IV. Glioblastoma. All I could think was: It&amp;#x27;s the same tumor that killed Ted Kennedy&amp;amp;mdash;and he had access to the best medical care in the world. What chance did we have? I crumpled a Kleenex and started bawling. &amp;quot;Baby, it&amp;#x27;s going to be OK. We&amp;#x27;ll get through it. We&amp;#x27;ll be better than ever,&amp;quot; said Justin, putting his arm around me. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m so sorry to be putting you through this. I&amp;#x27;m sorry.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s not your fault,&amp;quot; I replied. &amp;quot;You didn&amp;#x27;t do anything wrong. But I can&amp;#x27;t believe this is our life.&amp;quot; And this time there was no sugarcoating anything. It wasn&amp;#x27;t treatable. It wasn&amp;#x27;t curable. It was, at best, controllable in 60 percent of cases. All we had was time&amp;amp;mdash;maybe a few months, maybe a year or two. My poor husband, who&amp;#x27;d taught me to downhill-ski, who thought I was sexy and funny and smart, was tethered to an IV twice a month, being injected full of poison. Initially it seemed to work. He&amp;#x27;d flirt with the nurses, joking about his addiction to cheeseburgers and demanding one for every meal. I pulled on my blinders and pretended he was getting better. But he was withering. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m so tired. I just need a little nap,&amp;quot; he&amp;#x27;d say, and proceed to sleep for 14 hours. He&amp;#x27;d wake up bleary and try to play with Alex or hold him, but would soon return to bed, retreating from the noise. Our world contracted. Some friends vanished without so much as an email; others were pillars of support, calling us daily or coming over with food. I was humbled by their kindness. One friend made sure our son always had a happy place to play and invited us over when we needed to get out. Another had her husband manage our estate planning, taking care of complex paperwork basically for free. Maggie, a dear friend I hadn&amp;#x27;t seen in many months, sent us gorgeous flowers. Bronwyn would come with a bottle of wine for judgment-free girl talk, and Debbie flew cross-country to stay for 24 hours, just to hold Justin&amp;#x27;s hand and clean out our fridge. Donna in New York City with their son, Alex, last fall Cancer cells have one task: to reproduce. Justin&amp;#x27;s did so with ferocity. He became weak and exhausted, barely able to make the three-block walk from our apartment to Central Park. His brain, once sharp as a scalpel, became dull. He couldn&amp;#x27;t remember how to turn on the TV; he would stumble around, finally putting toothpaste in the dresser. One awful night he walked our dog and forgot where he&amp;#x27;d left him, forcing me to canvass our neighborhood until I located the terrified animal. Justin&amp;#x27;s muscular body became frail, his eyesight broken, leaving him unable to read or type. Seeing my husband rendered almost childlike cut me every day. And yet I had a baby to raise, and this baby was sunshine personified. He&amp;#x27;d see his dad and scream with glee. Justin would hold him. Then, sometimes, he&amp;#x27;d forget Alex&amp;#x27;s name. On top of everything, I was trying to maintain my work. There I was, discussing breast-feeding with a pregnant Maggie Gyllenhaal while my husband faded in and out back home. I interviewed one very, very famous celebrity, who told me of her belief that if you focused and thought positively and channeled that positive thought, you could overcome anything&amp;amp;mdash;including any health issue. I wanted to punch her in the face. At home I vacillated between rage and shame. Some days the anger felt like a life force, ugly and oily and bursting out like in that scene in Alien. I punished Justin for leaving me holding our family together. I&amp;#x27;d yell at him to get out of bed, to move, to be active, even as I loathed myself for it. &amp;quot;Do you think I&amp;#x27;m doing this on purpose?&amp;quot; he&amp;#x27;d ask. &amp;quot;Do you think I want this?&amp;quot; Still, I made sure to tell Justin every day that I loved him. He said it right back. &amp;quot;A lesser woman couldn&amp;#x27;t handle this,&amp;quot; he said. And he always knew my name. Justin&amp;#x27;s back pain became extreme, a sign the cancer had spread to his spine. Radiation didn&amp;#x27;t work. His memory became fractured. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m losing my shit,&amp;quot; he said quietly, sitting next to me on the couch one rainy afternoon, after another incident in which he forgot where we lived. &amp;quot;I know,&amp;quot; I replied with crushing sadness. His physician made the choice to stop the chemo. I asked her how much time we had. She told me that his family should see him soon. &amp;quot;In a few months?&amp;quot; I asked. &amp;quot;Two weeks,&amp;quot; she answered. NEXT: Coping With Reality &amp;amp;#187; When Alex asks about Justin, &amp;quot;I tell him that Daddy loved him so much,&amp;quot; Donna says. There are no words to describe the reality of sharing a bed with a dying person, of realizing that no medical wizardry could do a thing for him, of understanding that our son wouldn&amp;#x27;t remember his dad. I became Justin&amp;#x27;s keeper, forcing him to drink water and take his pills, and helping him to the bathroom. We&amp;#x27;d have moments of normalcy, the baby asleep and Justin giving me a shoulder rub; we&amp;#x27;d order pizza or burgers, and he&amp;#x27;d devour his with childish glee. In bed we&amp;#x27;d cuddle, and he&amp;#x27;d kiss me and tell me we&amp;#x27;d get through this. How do you tell a dying person that in fact we would not? I often wondered, Does he know that we&amp;#x27;ve hit the end of the road? &amp;quot;Please make sure our son goes to college. That&amp;#x27;s all I&amp;#x27;m asking of you,&amp;quot; he said to me in a quiet moment. I had my answer. One weekend Justin rallied enough to ride to the beach with us and take family photos with Alex. He stumbled over to me and kissed my neck. &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re mine,&amp;quot; he said. A week later he suffered a horrific seizure and was admitted to a hospice center. I spent his final conscious hours chatting to him in the sterile room as he moaned, eyes closed, every once in a while uttering &amp;quot;fuck.&amp;quot; I&amp;#x27;d gone home from the hospital that night to see Alex; the call, in an odd bit of fate, came minutes after Alex had inexplicably woken up crying. The voice: cloying, sympathetic. The outcome: dully expected. Justin was gone, a month shy of our second anniversary. Coupled with my gut-wrenching sense of loss was a feeling of relief. There&amp;#x27;s a certain liberation in no longer caring for a very sick person. Finally Alex and I could blast Britney Spears for dance parties; we could have his little friends over and slam trucks into walls and do all the loud, clattering things toddlers do. But mostly there was a huge crevasse of sorrow. I still don&amp;#x27;t know what lessons Justin&amp;#x27;s death holds for me or what perspective I will have 15 years from now. I do know that Alex and I are due a supersize dollop of something good. At times it hits me again that I&amp;#x27;ll never reenact a stilted interview for Justin or giggle while he performs his ostentatious wine-sniffing maneuver in front of a snooty sommelier, and it&amp;#x27;s like being stabbed in the chest. Almost two years later I miss him so much that the ache twists up my insides. So what&amp;#x27;s next, you might wonder? Is it possible to recover after losing your soulmate? Yes and no. A few of my realizations so far: I&amp;#x27;ve learned that there&amp;#x27;s no right way to grieve, no script. One moment, the sun beating down on me at the playground, I&amp;#x27;ll experience profound joy. An hour later it&amp;#x27;s paralyzing anguish as I remember that Justin is gone. But I&amp;#x27;m optimistic too. Every day, in the form of my three-year-old, I have a reminder that joy not only exists but it can be contagious. Alex deserves a happy mom, who&amp;#x27;ll show him pictures and stress his dad&amp;#x27;s love for him. I&amp;#x27;ve learned it&amp;#x27;s OK to rely on others. I have generous friends, who call to check in, babysit, or come over to watch Real Housewives. Financially, we&amp;#x27;re no Bloombergs, but we&amp;#x27;re fine. I&amp;#x27;m honest when people ask how I am: I&amp;#x27;m getting through it, in half-day increments. I&amp;#x27;ve learned that work is a blessing. It&amp;#x27;s a testament to my boss that my job was my refuge. Her only dictate: Come back if and when you&amp;#x27;re ready. And yet what would have been my option? Sitting at home with the blinds drawn? My first interview as a widow, a month after Justin&amp;#x27;s death, was with the delightful Julia Louis-Dreyfus. For a blissful hour I didn&amp;#x27;t think about my empty apartment as she and I bantered about the pitiful state of our political system. And then there&amp;#x27;s the inimitable Joan Rivers. &amp;quot;Would it kill you to put on lipstick?&amp;quot; she barked at me during another interview, somehow sounding maternal while giving me grief. &amp;quot;Go set up one of those online profiles, go out with 100 guys, and you&amp;#x27;ll meet a good one,&amp;quot; she promised. &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ll perform at your wedding.&amp;quot; But I know dating is going to be hard. Justin was the true love of my life&amp;amp;mdash;the man who taught me to ride a four-wheeler in Arkansas. The man who sneaked me into a vacant room at Caesars in Atlantic City for a quickie. The man who told me, to the end, that I was a &amp;quot;keeper&amp;quot; and that the best thing he ever did was marry me. But the biggest thing that I&amp;#x27;ve learned is that, despite all those gifts, I&amp;#x27;m capable of getting through this without Justin, of moving on and living my life without him. It&amp;#x27;s easy to focus on what Justin and I didn&amp;#x27;t get to do in our 23 months of marriage&amp;amp;mdash;visit Athens, ski in Vermont, eat at The French Laundry. But I&amp;#x27;m concentrating instead on how lucky I am. How blessed. How fortunate to have had what I did&amp;amp;mdash;and now to have a living, breathing, shrieking, laughing, giddy 32-pound little boy to carry on Justin&amp;#x27;s legacy, and keep him with me forever."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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