Since you died music has taken on a whole new meaning. Suddenly it isn’t just background noise as we pottered round the house or went on another road trip but artists speaking directly to me. I still play the playlist I made from songs you would send me. Some make me smile others now just make me weep. After you died, I mentioned a few songs you had sent me to your friends – they questioned that it had been you sending them because it was so far away from your usual style. It feels like I had the secret hidden teddy bear of you that was all mine.

I heard a song the other day while I was cleaning the house that got my brain ticking over. The lyrics included “I hope I die first/ ‘Cause I don’t wanna live without you/ I don’t wanna ever learn/ How to fall asleep without you”. I know we had a very similar conversation in the past on the many nights where time disappeared after we had shut the world away. You always joked that you wouldn’t live to be old and there was no point planning your 50^th because you wouldn’t be here to see it. Now this feels like a dark premonition you had which gave you the permission to live your life unapologetically and love as hard as you did. We talked about how I would be a terrible widow because I couldn’t sleep without you and needed you for the simplest of tasks – you teaching me how to chop logs should have included a safety warning, hard hats and visors!

When Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars came on one lazy Sunday morning in bed we said that it’d be best if we died together and then we can die happy. Life doesn’t work out like in the films though where we live to a ripe old age, see the kids grow up, curl up and quietly drift off to sleep into the next life. Death is brutal, traumatic and nothing could have prepared me for the fall out of your death. The emotional fallout was expected; the mental health dive would have also been anticipated. But the physical pain debilitated me. When you read about people dying of a broken heart – I can fully understand how that happens. The crushing chest that doesn’t let up, the palpitations that continue even when trying to rest and feeling like my lungs had shrunk to the size of a grape so even breathing felt exhausting. A few times I felt like if I fell asleep I wouldn’t wake up again. In hindsight, the worst thing about this thought process, was that this felt preferable to the constant pain I was in. I just needed the pain to stop and for us to be back together.

I have said multiple times that you would have done better than me if it had been the other way round. You were the strong one of the two of us and you would come in and make me feel like I was enough. Whether it was the boys driving me to distraction, work tipping me over the edge, life overwhelming me, or me just being an absolute needy lunatic you walking in and giving me a big hug would just balance me out. Together we could take on the world. We joked that you were my portable power pack.

And I genuinely do believe that you would have coped better than me if the roles were reversed. But the thought of you living with a fraction of this pain would also be too much to bear. How selfish of me to wish that the roles were reversed so you would be the one to live the rest of your life with this pain.

On the 18^th July, 9 days after your accident, a song called Eternity was released and the first time I heard it I had to stop driving and I sobbed for an age. You never got to hear it but it sums up the new life I never wanted perfectly. “It feels like an eternity/ Since I had you here with me/ Since I had to learn to be/ Someone you don’t know/ To be with you in paradise/ What I wouldn’t sacrifice/ Why’d you have to chase the light/ Somewhere I can’t go”.

One day we’ll be back together, and it will be as if no time has passed at all. Until then I know I need to live a life to make you proud.