Writing challenge day 3

3) Your first kiss and first love.

My first kiss would have been in high school I think. It obviously didn't leave a large impression on me. If it had, surely I would remember all the details. My first love. Well how long do you want this to be?

I can't tell you the exact day I met David but it would have been sometime in 1996. We were both working at Universal Studios in California. I was a ride op and he was show crew. I had noticed him, I noticed everyone. But didn't think much of it. I'm not the type of person guys asked out. I felt it was because of my being so overweight, but I suspect my lack of confidence had a lot to do with it. But in April of 1997 David asked me out! Our first date was on April 19, 1996. And that was it for us. The date lasted over 12 hours and we were inseparable from that point on. We eloped to Las Vegas six weeks later. He was my first love, my best friend, and my soulmate!

David taught me that I was loveable, that I was worthy of being in a relationship. My David died on October 14, 2009. Twelve and a half years after we got married. He had been diagnosed with kidney failure in March of 2004. He went on dialysis in December of 2006. He was on dialysis for two years before getting the miracle of a kidney transplant from an anonymous living donor on December 30, 2008.  From that point on he was as healthy as he had ever been in our marriage. He started going to the gym and working out. Life was looking up for us!

But then on October 7, 2009 he went to the bedroom not feeling well. I could hear him wheezing in the living room. I thought he was having an asthma attack. I ended up having to call 911, while on the phone with them he stopped breathing. When the EMS got there he was breathing again and he had a pulse. But when they went to put him on the board his heart stopped. It stopped again in the ambulance, and once more in the ER. All told there was a total of over 20 minutes without oxygen to his brain. They put him in a drug induced coma to see if that would help. He never woke up again. He was on a respirator and was matching the machine breath for breath. Until the morning of October 14. That morning he had stopped breathing completely and it was the machine that was keeping him alive. I had to do the one thing no person should ever have to do. I had to make the decision to take my love off of life support. I will always wonder if I made the right decision. Doctors know a lot, but they don't know everything. You read stories about others waking years and years later and they are fine. But if I had kept David on life support, I would have been keeping him alive for me. I just couldn't do that. He wouldn't have wanted that.

I miss him every single day. It's been over six years, sometimes it feels like yesterday, other times it feels like a life time ago. I just miss him! And I will always wonder if I made the right choice.