"I lost my husband on flight MH370. Now I need to tell our sons he's gone."

Paul Weeks’ wife knows her husband is never coming home. What she doesn’t know is why. Tonight she broke her silence.

“His sons and I would have been the people he was thinking about as he went down so I take some comfort in that, if that’s how it happened, he would have been thinking of us in his final moments.”

This is just one of the heartbreaking thoughts Danica Weeks shared with 60 Minutes on Sunday night. Her husband Paul Weeks is presumed dead, along with another 238 souls. The desperate search for the plane continues off the coast of Western Australia in the Southern Indian Ocean, the plane’s last known location.

Paul Weeks was leaving his wife Danica and two sons, Lincoln, 3, and Jack, 10-months, for his dream job in Mongolia as an engineer. He flew from Perth to Kuala Lumpur and that's where he boarded Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

Her last correspondence from her husband took place as he was boarding his final flight in Kuala Lumpur. Paul sent his wife a final message, an email telling her he already missed her and their boys.

That flight was never meant to be off the coast of Western Australia and authorities are still trying to figure out why it was there. Danica is both tortured and comforted by the fact that in all likelihood, Paul died not too far from his home.

“So close (to where the plane went down) and I would have been out at the shops at the time. I was in Perth merrily going along our family way while he was crashing into the ocean,” she says.

Danica is clinging to every single memory she has of her husband.

"He kissed me goodbye and hugged me and of course he'd hugged the boys. As he's walking, he turned around and Lincoln screamed out, 'I love you' and he blew us a kiss and walked out the door. And that was it."

This is a couple who survived the Christchurch earthquake of 2011. They then lived through a car crash just after Christmas last year after relocating to Perth. After surviving two near-death experiences, Paul made sure to spend every possible moment with his family before leaving them for a six-week stint at his new job.

He took endless photos and made the most of every second. Then, before boarding the flight he gave his wife his wedding ring and his watch, one for each of his children, just in case something happened.

Now that Malaysia Airlines have declared there are no survivors from flight MH 370, Danica is trying to build up the courage to tell her boys that daddy is gone.

“Lincoln, this morning, he was having a meltdown and he’s (saying), ‘I’m missing Daddy, I’m missing Daddy, when’s Daddy coming home? Is Daddy still missing?”

Danica says three weeks is a long time to hope, to pray, to wish that her husband would come back to her and still have no answers. "'You can't give up. You can't give up until you have that' - 18 days is a long time to go through that. It's agonising. Every day just having no finality no answers."

Still, she is trying to find some comfort in her children.

"Lincoln is just is such his personality and Jack is just the spitting image of him and that's it, that's what Paul always said that any achievement, they were his greatest achievements. That's the hardest part because you know you can't bring Dad back for them."

The search continues for the missing flight in the Southern Indian Ocean. So far alleged debris has turned out to be inconclusive. Authorities have speculated that the flight was deliberately brought down by someone. It's likely that the truth may never been known.

This week family members of the missing were sent a text message from Malaysia Airlines, confirming the missing plane had most likely crashed and there were no survivors. Danica said that after reading the message she became hysterical.

"Just sickened, sickened that someone would actually send me a text message to say that my loved one was dead. And this is my husband, my loving husband father of my children and they've sent me a text message."

It is hard to imagine a more impersonal conclusion to an intensely personal nightmare.

Images courtesy of 60 minutes

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Since her husband's disappearance, Danica has been sharing precious family photos in an effort to keep his memory alive. Click through to catch a glimpse of who Paul Weeks was and how much he loved his family.