I met my wife, Galit, when we were both 27 on a beach in the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. We fell in love that night and both dreamt about each other. Eight months later, we were married; she gave birth to our first son six months after that. We set up home in San Francisco and by 2007, aged 35, we were in a really good place. We had two kids, Tomer, 8, and Naomi, 5, with a third on the way. I was working for Saatchi & Saatchi S, a sustainability consulting firm; my wife was one paper away from being a certified yoga instructor.

The birth of our third child, a boy we named Satya, was without complication. Galit left the hospital after a day and a half, feeling good. The next day, a beautiful June day, we were drinking champagne on our sun deck and my parents and brother came over for dinner. My wife felt a pressure around her diaphragm, so she went to lie down. The pain only increased, so I called a doctor, who advised us to go to hospital. Leaving the children with my parents, we walked down the driveway, Galit crying in pain. She fainted as I put her in the car, so I laid her on the pavement, but she stopped breathing and her skin turned grey. I tried to give her mouth-to-mouth and called the ambulance. They drove her to the emergency room, where doctors couldn’t identify the problem, beyond it being internal bleeding — she had been bleeding since the birth and we had not known. Words fail to describe my horror and shock. There she was, hooked up to all these machines and tubes, with 15 physicians and nurses around her.

They worked on her for several hours, but at midnight, the doctor told me that her heart wasn’t beating. They disconnected her and I just erupted with emotion. Why were these sweet kids the ones to lose their mother? Galit’s body was already breaking down and her face was swollen and jaundiced — I kissed her forehead, and said goodbye.

Getting back home was the start of a new life. I was lost in sadness, yet was still required to function for my children. The older ones were asleep, but Satya was awake, and I gave him a bottle (I’d had to send my parents out to get a bottle and formula — we had been counting on breast-feeding). I didn’t sleep at all that night, or the next few. I kept thinking how I was going to tell my kids. At 7am they came in and I told them she had died.

My son broke down in tears — he got that she wasn’t coming back. But it didn’t have the same gravitas for my daughter — she couldn’t understand it. The following week saw a lot of family come over for the funeral. People were around every day, bringing food, helping with the children and taking them places. The community support was incredible. People sent notes and called me — even people I didn’t know. One of my colleagues’ wives started a Yahoo! group so people could sign up for meal-making — I had food for three months. I also had more than my fair share of whisky, but I was so torn up, I didn’t feel drunk. I stopped drinking when someone told me that it wouldn’t be good for Satya. I had to absorb the suffering.

I stayed home for three weeks and then started going to work a few hours a day, crying on my commute. A friend took Satya every day for a solid year while I was at work. But I had to learn how to be a parent and not merely a working father who lets the mother do all the parenting. Men tend to have a good excuse — I could always come home later and get out of the mundane kids’ stuff. As a single parent, there is a tremendous shift in your life. It had never occurred to me that one day I would have to raise an infant single-handedly, but how could I do anything but step up and try to be an amazing parent?

I realised, however, that the maternal instinct is not the same as a paternal one — I just always had this feeling, how do you raise an infant? Waking up alone three times a night to feed or change him and then working a full day at the office was not easy. And for the first six months, it was difficult for me to cradle Satya without tears streaming down my face, silently screaming that his mother could not hold her baby. It required me to summon a tremendous amount of love, patience and compassion. It doesn’t always come naturally to be soft and tender, but the children and I would talk about it every day and we cried together as a family — it was always okay to be emotional. I don’t think I’m overprotective now, but I’m more perceptive when something is bothering them — there’s nobody else to pick up on that.

I didn’t see a therapist, but I talked to friends who were deep and grounded, who gave me powerful insights of what Galit could mean to me now — I could look at this as a loss, but I still have her children. After three months, however, the support died down, and the number of people who remembered grew fewer and fewer. I felt isolated as a father among mothers, and seeing families together was so poignant. I didn’t go to the mums’ groups. I think mothers found me difficult to approach, so they just got on with their lives.

While this is the last thing that any husband or father would choose, I almost feel gratitude that it happened to me, because it has been the single greatest lesson in my life, a point of such tremendous change where I really had to examine who I was. My heart was torn open like never before and I was forced to feel every emotion. I had failed to appreciate how hard Galit had worked to raise the children and take care of the house. Many men grossly undervalue their wives’ contributions. So I tried to pay attention to that: how do I reinvent my life to be a better person? I may be ready to be vocal about the issue of maternal mortality as a global issue. More than 500,000 women die annually from birth-related causes. How many mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and communities need to suffer when the solution is largely an issue of resource allocation and access to basic medical care? And I’m writing a book, using my experience to provide guidance and solidarity for men experiencing change, loss and transition. We have few places to turn to for support because of this absurd fear of appearing weak.

I got together with my wonderful fiancée, Sara, this February, 18 months after my wife’s death — I’m 37, it’s not like I’m in my sixties and happy to be single for life. Naomi accepted her very quickly — you could see how happy she was to have that female outlet. Tomer has struggled to accept our marriage — part of it is guilt that he’s betraying his mother. Satya didn’t grow up with a mother, so he’s like, “Who is this person?” It’s getting better, but it takes time. Did I feel guilt? On the contrary. Galit would have wanted me to be happy and not lonely, and for her children to have someone to help care for them.

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