Five years ago today, my wife Sheila died. We were married 9,982 days, 8 hours and 50 minutes. That's over 27 years. We met at Fisk University when I was 19 and she was 20. She was a native of Nashville, and I was from DC.

When I first saw her, I literally fell of a fence. Her fiancee pulled up in a Datsun 240 Z and escorted her to every class. I didn't have a girlfriend in high school and my soph year wasn't looking too good either.

She asked me for my phone number. I was scared to call her; she had that big engagement ring on her finger. "I didn't come 800 miles away from DC to get shot over a woman." "That's not your problem. Call me up."

So I did. But then Delta Sigma Theta interrupted. On "come out night," her fiancee was the DJ doing the introductions.

End of the road for me.

I won an essay contest, and my Kappa Alpha Psi friend coordinated my clothes so I'd look decent. I didn't know Sheila was volunteering at the presentation. I was surrounded by my friends.

"Girl, let me go get my husband," she told a friend.

"James, do you have a girlfriend?" (Come on now! She knew the answer to that.)
"No."
"Well I got rid of that fiancee. Why don't you meet me in the library after class?"

It was on and popping. My first real college girlfriend! Smart, beautiful, curses like crazy.

She graduated as the valedictorian, 4.0, Phi Beta Kappa. Got accepted into every law school to which she applied; she missed only 2 questions on the LSAT. Once Harvard said Amen, it was off to HLS. I won election as SGA President, so I finished my senior year.

We were married February 14, 1988 in DC where she was an attorney for a big law firm. I was a broke "staff assistant" for Rep. Cardiss Collins - a job I got after trying to work on the Hill for six years.

Let me fast forward here. Soon after we were married, she was pregnant. That child was still-born at 8 months. We had three children; the oldest has #autism and other developmental challenges; the other, a boy and a girl, were typically developing.

Autism hasn't kept James from having a full life. Getting there wasn't easy, though. This is him giving his mother his MVP from the Special Olympics a week before she died.

She was an excellent attorney. She kept over 30 people out of federal prison - for free. People called me months after she died, asking about cases. "You're gonna have to find another Harvard trained attorney to take your cases."

She ran a trade association for 14 years before multiple sclerosis made it impossible for her to work. She built this group from a $64K deficit to a $1.5 million surplus.

She was bedridden the last five years of her life. I had to carry her in my arms everywhere she had to go. No, I am not supposed to get, nor do I want, any awards for doing so - that's what husbands are supposed to do. She was proud of all three of our children.

In the last week of her life, she slept beneath a "Go Army, Beat Navy" flag and demanded all of the doctors and nurses entering her room respond with "Go Army!"

After a series of heart attacks and being intubated, her doctors asked if I had a life directive, and what did I want to do. Of course we had one.

"Let's remove the breathing tube."

After calling my pastor, the pastor at Johns Hopkins, and my closest relatives, she was surrounded by 14 people. In her room was her son's West Point uniform; a letter written by her daughter and her son's MVP trophy.

As I whispered the lyrics to the Temptations "You're My Everything" to her in her ear, she died in my arms at 8:50AM.

"You surely must know magic, girl
'Cause you changed my life.
It was dull and ordinary,
You made it sunny and bright.
I WAS BLESSED THE DAY I FOUND YOU
Gonna build my whole world around you;
You're everything good girl, and you're all that matters to me."

"When my way was dark,
And troubles were near,
Your love provided the light so I could see, girl.
Just knowing your love was near, when times were bad,
Kept the world
From closing in on me, girl.
I WAS BLESSED THE DAY I FOUND YOU . . ."