"If there is such thing as a perfect marriage we must have come very damn close to it" - this is just one of the moving lines read out by Frank Shaw at his wife's funeral earlier this year. Now, aged 83, the Nottinghamshire widower faces his first Christmas without her for 42 years.
Joan died in February this year, aged 87, after a long battle with breast cancer. "She was a terrific woman, I run out of superlatives. Kind, generous, thoughtful, everything. She was my life," Frank, of Gedling, said.
The pair met at work 50 years ago, before getting together years later. Frank, a former Tetra Pak worker who was a policeman for a period, said he wished his first Christmas without her would "come and go".
