After my husband died, I struggled to listen to music – but now I find comfort in the songs he loved

‘Music was Brad’s love language. For much of the past two years since he died, the predominant soundtrack has been silence.’ Illustration: Victoria Hart/Guardian Design

Happy or sad, music lives in the very marrow of my bones. So on the day my husband, Brad, died almost two years ago, the music he left behind died in me too.

A man who couldn’t hold a tune or strum a chord but whose knowledge was encyclopaedic, Brad embodied music. His appetite for musical discovery was insatiable; his collection, like the impact of his passing, immeasurable. When we met in 1996, he began gradually installing a new catalogue into my psyche: ambient, Americana, rock, folk, a little blues, a lot of country, much of it outside the mainstream. Brad slid songs into my soul like coins in a jukebox – stacking a playlist, building a library.