When my wife, the writer Siân Busby, died just over two years ago, at the age of 51, I felt as though I had been hit by a train. Although non-smoking, Siân had been diagnosed five years earlier with lung cancer, an illness that kills most sufferers within a year, and although she was periodically acutely ill during those years, we lived our lives on the basis that we would grow old and die together.
I was not prepared for her death. The fact that the rational part of my brain had known that there was a strong probability that the cancer would kill her did not make it easier when it happened. I felt raw pain for months. And I still ache, sometimes acutely