Antonio Basco had been sleeping on the pavement next to his wife's new cross for nearly a week.

He had been waking up under the relentless El Paso summer sun to clean off the dead and wilted flowers and ready the white wooden memorial for the outpouring of mourners who have been flooding the Walmart to pay their respects.

The 61-year-old, who goes by Tony, isn't sure what else to do. He's been waking up next to Margie Reckard every morning since he met her 22 years ago in Omaha, Nebraska. "She was my world," he said.

"My wife is a very special human being," Basco told BuzzFeed News via phone from the Walmart parking lot on Wednesday. "She's not a person you just meet in a bar or a restaurant. She's the person you wait your entire life to deserve but you don't deserve."

Reckard, 63, was one of 22 victims who died after a white supremacist opened fire inside the Walmart near the Cielo Vista Mall last weekend. Basco said his wife shopped at that supercenter every Saturday while he stayed home and did chores.

When he learned that she had been shot, he said, "I felt everything leave me." Now he doesn't really have anyone else except his cat, Princess, whom he called "the other love of [his] life." The couple moved to El Paso about nine years ago and did "anything and everything together." They have a few friends in town, "but no one much."

When faced with the overwhelming task of planning his wife's funeral, Basco realized that he didn't really have anyone to invite. He decided to ask everyone, Harrison Johnson, the director of Perches Funeral Homes, told BuzzFeed News.

"He was concerned not a lot of people would come because he doesn't have family here," Johnson said. "He hasn't shared much about his past, but he said she was the best thing that's ever happened to him."

So on Tuesday, the funeral home's Facebook page posted details for the event and invited anyone to the service: "Let's show him & his Wife some El Paso Love."