Background

I met my husband at work.  We shared an office, but that is a story for another day.  In addition to our profession, my husband was also an Army Reservist.  He was deployed multiple times, including to the First Gulf War (Desert Storm) and to Uzbekistan/Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom).  Due to his experiences there, he experienced a variety of physical and mental issues that caused him to be completely disabled 9 years ago.  He was frequently obsessive, entertained many conspiracy theories, was too anxious to leave the house (although he managed a few 3 day vacations over the years), and didn't like to go anywhere new.  This was quite a change from when I met him - 25 years ago, he was adventurous, silly, appreciative of life, and always trying to be positive.  We got married upon his return from Afghanistan.  I sometimes think he wasn't sure I would wait for him, since his deployment was almost a year long. Over time, he became joyless, relentlessly negative, and very much down on himself.  I operated as his therapist, because he didn't trust the medical systems to treat him properly (with good reason).  Our daughter was his only source of happiness and that happiness was fleeting.  As she became a teenager, he had a more difficult time navigating a relationship with her.  He wanted discipline and respect, but he also wanted to act like the sibling she never had.  She found that incomprehensible and unpredictable, and so they would butt heads a lot.  

My husband was an amazing man.  He could figure out how to do almost anything.  It would drive me a little crazy when he would call for estimates for projects and then decide he could do it himself.  He built our house.  Sure, he was the general contractor, but he also helped the framers build, assisted with the siding, worked with a friend to do the roof, installed the hardwood floors on his own, made me help with the insulation and painting (and the tray ceiling in our bedroom that was completed after much swearing), helped his friend do all the wiring, and completed any repairs necessary.  He would also figure out how to fix anything by YouTube video.  And once he qualified for disability, he stayed home and kept the house clean, delivered the kid to school, and generally made my life so easy that I couldn't even believe it.  In the pandemic years, he also started experimenting with cooking.

He was really excellent at buying and selling things for a profit.  He had a great head for numbers and a good eye for things he could buy cheap and sell for more money.  It started in his teens with cars and motorcycles.  But over the past years, he took up collecting, repairing, and selling antique pocket watches.  But he was also obsessed with the stock market, which was a huge source of stress and misery for him, and was one of the main reasons he decided that he could not live any longer.  

I miss him every day.