On 27th September, at approximately 12:35 am, my lovely husband Martin sadly passed away. He was diagnosed with Adenocarcinoma of the left lung in August this year. In order to determine the type of cancer and treatment he might be offered, he underwent a biopsy of the lung. From that day, Martin’s condition dramatically deteriorated due to Pneumonia of the right lung from which he was unable to recover. My only consolation is that he is no longer suffering pain and distress. The final two weeks of his life were harrowing to witness as his family and I comforted him in hospital. At this point, I would like to pay tribute to the team of doctors and nurses who fought in vain to defeat his illness. They showed us great kindness and compassion throughout.
But while all those who knew Martin mourn his loss, I want to pay my own tribute to the man I spent 16 years with, 13 of those years as his wife. Martin came into my life in December 2009 while I was working for Sight and Sound Technology in Northampton. An email dropped into my inbox one dark afternoon which enquired about one of our products. I used to go to school with a boy of the same name so I responded to Martin’s email with an additional question: ‘Are you the person who attended my school in London?’ I had to wait a day before his response was forthcoming: ‘No, I’m a Martin Brown from Northern Ireland’ he replied. I will never know why we continued to write to one another after that but we did. We struck up an electronic conversation that was full of wit and curiosity. After two weeks of exchanging emails, we swapped mobile numbers and took our blossoming friendship off corporate email. By the end of December, Martin had given me an invitation to visit him in Northern Ireland at some point the following year.
From then on, I couldn’t wait to rush home from work every night to boot up my computer and find a charming email waiting for me from my new friend. Martin was a good writer, and his emails were full of fun. But what shone through for me was his genuine kindness. His mother was suffering from vascular dementia, and Martin had taken early retirement from his job to look after her. His sight was also deteriorating due to Retinitis Pigmentosa, (RP,) and he was finding this naturally very challenging. Yet his emails to me were full of warmth, and I wore a permanent smile from thinking about him.
In the end, we met on 5th February 2010 when I flew to Northern Ireland for a visit. From the moment I arrived at his home, I felt at ease and welcome. I also realised something else: I was falling in love with this beautiful soul!
From then on, we became a couple. I knew then that I was going to move to Northern Ireland to be with Martin, it was when, not if. He was devoted to his mother, and I understood that living with someone who had dementia was going to be tough. So, undeterred and extremely happy, I moved in with Martin on 20th May 2010, only five months after his initial enquiry email. We got engaged on 20th May the following year. His mother succumbed to dementia four months later which was a huge loss to Martin as they had always been extremely close. We married on 20th May 2013 in a simple ceremony attended by our close family and friends. By this time, I had started to carve out a life in Northern Ireland where I felt settled and happy. Martin and I grew ever closer. I guess you could say that we became inseparable. We shared everything with one another and were real soulmates. Many people have told Martin and I that if there was such a thing as a perfect couple, then we were it. Martin was an extremely intelligent man from whom I learnt so much. He had a wicked sense of humour, there was always something to laugh at every day. But he was incredibly bashful and I found his shyness to be one of his most endearing qualities. I am an extrovert but it complimented his introvert side. Sure we fell out occasionally, what couple doesn’t, but it was a joy when we resumed our normal domesticity.
The impact of Martin’s death for me is enormous, not just because of the grief, the arrangements one has to make and the paperwork requiring my attention. It is simply that the other half of me is no longer here. The house is quiet; the other side of the bed is empty; the laughter and banter is no more; his arms will no longer envelop me; a light in my life has gone out. Yes I will come to terms with his death at some point because I am an optimist and a lover of life. But, right now, my emotions are raw, and I just want to experience what has happened in my own way and in my own time.
Martin and I did not have a faith. Although he was born a Catholic and I a Protestant, none of that mattered or was important to us. So we talked on several occasions about how we would like our remains to be disposed of and the kind of ceremony we each wanted. Martin asked to be cremated and for his ashes to be buried beside his mother and brother. We did not want a religious service or a stranger we didn’t know talking about Martin as if he was his best friend. So I simply chose four songs for the funeral that Martin and I loved:
- Beth Nielsen-Chapman, All I Have
- John Denver, A Country Girl In Paris
- Simon & Garfunkel, The Sound Of Silence
- Roy Orbison, In Dreams
I have a great passion for music, and my emotions tend to go with whatever I am listening to. For me, music is like opening a photograph album and looking down at all the various memories it evokes. Some songs can make me break my heart, while others make me smile and become immersed in their content. The above four songs in particular will always remind me of Martin because he would sometimes ask Spotify to play them while he was prepping food or was just in the mood to listen to them. I am a very emotional person though and found these songs very difficult to hear at the funeral where I thought I would never stop crying.
Since his death, I have been struck by the wonderful tributes that have poured in for Martin from family, friends, neighbours, people he worked with, and even shopkeepers or the townsfolk of Maghera and beyond. To everyone, thank you! Thank you Martin for the 16 happy years we shared: for your love, kindness, generosity and devotion, and for being you, the other half of me.