She lived eighteen months longer than the original prognosis, but finally she was taken from us.

Ben and I were with her the night she died. She had a private room in the Royal Stoke Hospital, and we took turns to sit vigil. Towards the end, neither of us could bear to leave, so one would sleep in a chair in the corner of the room, while the other sat with Beth and held her hand.

I was sleeping when Ben woke me to say Dr Jackson thought it was nearly time. I’ve written millions of words, but I still cannot find a way to describe the emptiness that spread from my core and engulfed me. Those words don’t do it justice. None can. It is a visceral experience beyond the confines of language. These words on the page are intended to evoke emotion. They connect my brain to yours, but sometimes they aren’t enough and I have to ask you to reach for experience, to trawl the depths of memory to understand how it felt.

If you’ve lost someone you love, you will know. If not, I envy you your innocence. It is an anguish so deep, so primitive, it burns, but this animalistic sense of loss is combined with a consciousness that understands the notion of time and can conceptualize the permanent absence that will blight the rest of our lives. It is our unique curse to grieve for what was and lament what might have been. All those shared moments never to be realized. A son motherless. A husband robbed of the light by which he steered.

I went to her bed, and Ben and Dr Jackson stepped back to give me the pretence of privacy. Beth was on the edge of consciousness, but I like to think she knew it was me who held her hand at the end. Her fingers were as light as dry twigs and her skin was paper white, almost translucent. Blue veins lurked beneath the surface, transporting broken blood back to her ailing heart with each erratic beat. We’d been warned to expect Cheyne–Stokes breathing, and her breaths grew shallower and shallower with each rise and fall of her emaciated chest, and then finally she took the breath we’d been warned about. A long draw that was different from all the rest – deep, raw, and final, as though her body was saying goodbye.

And then she stopped.

She was gone.

I cried.

I wept like never before.

I wanted whatever foulness had taken her to reach out and take me too. I had known death was coming, but it is one thing to imagine something so profound, quite another to live it. Ben and Dr Jackson led me out. I don’t really remember much beyond that. They took me somewhere. Words were spoken, but I didn’t hear them.

My beloved Beth was gone.

She died as I held her hand.

That’s all I really remember of that night.