He loved her from the start.

"The first date I had with her," he says. "I knew."

Early gifts

She called him "Lovie."

He called her "Busy Bee."

During his conversation with CNN, Lusardi looks at pictures taken two months ago at a wedding. Rousseau was trying to outdo herself by making the best funny face.

He thinks about the past year. It was only a year he had. It went by too fast.

They never fought, he says.

He wishes they would have been able to argue over what kind of rug to buy for the apartment he'd always imagined they'd share.

At his home now are the wrapped Christmas presents that she gave to him. It's the kind of thing an elementary school teacher would do -- give the gifts early, let the joyful anticipation build, bring out the kid in someone else.

Lusardi is broken by the thought of unwrapping them. So he hasn't. That would feel final, over.

"It doesn't seem real," he says. "It doesn't seem permanent and finite."

Lusardi met President Obama when he visited Newtown Sunday. Obama hugged him.

"I want a hug from Lauren, you know, and I'm not going to get that."

Lusardi went on her Facebook page and wrote, as if he were writing to her. "I got a hug from the President."

He would trade that experience in a second to embrace her again.

He's been listening to Ingrid Michaelson's "The Way I Am."

It reminds him of her.

If you were falling, then I would catch you

You need a light, I'd find a match

'Cause I love the way you say good morning

And you take me the way I am

If you are chilly, here take my sweater

Your head is aching, I'll make it better

'Cause I love the way you call me baby