'I had a strange urge to photograph my husband at the train station. Days later, I understood why.'

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In June 2018, Marie Alessi walked her husband Rob to the train station as her two boys rode along beside them on their scooters.

It was an ordinary Sunday morning, filled with the kind of easy chatter and hand-holding that had defined their 12-year marriage.

Rob was heading to Perth for work — just another routine business trip.

"We were walking hand in hand, chitchatting, and we waited for the train to come in and I had this nudge of 'take a photo of him and the boys'," she told Mamamia.

Marie takes a lot of photos, so she didn't think too much of it. But something made her pause and listen to that inner voice. She snapped a photo of her boys with their father, then another of the train as it pulled away from the station.

Days later, they were the photos she would share with the world when she announced Rob had died.

Rob and Marie with their boys. Image: Supplied.

The call that changed everything.

The call came when Marie was at home. It was the coroner in Perth — she had better sit down.

Rob had suffered a brain aneurysm and died. Just like that. No warning, no goodbye.

In an instant, Marie went from a happily married 45-year-old to a widow.

"It was like… having this song playing on a record player and then the needle scratches and the music stops, and I just dipped into this world of surreal," she said.

"I just thought, 'That can't be right. There's no way.' You can't make sense of it. It's such a slow-motion moment."

But reality was waiting downstairs. Her boys, aged eight and 10, were in the living room, blissfully unaware that their world was about to change.

"There were seven steps from our bedroom to the living room," she said.

Seven steps to find words for the unspeakable.

"There is no sugarcoating a message like 'Your dad just died'," Marie said.

"You just have to tell them. It was horrible. It was by far the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my entire life."

"My younger son, he said, 'I'm only eight and I'm not going to have a daddy anymore.'"

Marie and Rob were the couple people teased for being so in love. Image: Supplied.

Marie and Rob always joked they would be "the couple on the retirement brochures" — silver-haired and radiant, wearing crisp white linen as they strolled along some distant beach.

"Everybody looked at us as that dream couple," she said.

"We were always holding hands... I just loved the way we loved and supported each other and it was just really, really beautiful."

Their love story began with loss. Marie had lost her father at just 20, spending the next decade clawing her way out of grief's depths with therapy and soul-searching.

"I learned at a very young age how quickly life can be over," she said.

"That was my dad's gift to me really... how to be in the present moment and to appreciate someone so wholeheartedly."

At 25, working as a flight attendant, she landed in Sydney for the first time and felt something she'd never experienced: "Coming home after an eternity. This is where I belong."

It took her six more years to follow that calling, but at 31, Marie packed up her life and moved to Sydney. Ten months later, Rob walked into her world. Another 10 months after that, they were married.

"He proposed to me five months after meeting me... That's when I learnt what that phrase means 'when you know, you know'."

When Marie met Rob, she knew he was 'the one'.

The conversation that became a lifeline.

Three years before that final train station goodbye, tragedy struck close to home. A young off-duty firefighter had died in a head-on collision on Rob's route home, leaving behind a 16-month-old daughter.

That night, shaken by the proximity of tragedy, they had the conversation most couples avoid.

"We had the 'what if' conversation," Marie recalled.

"What would you do if something was to happen to me?"

"The essence of that conversation was 'I would want you to create the happiest life possible for you and the boys because that's what love is'," she said.

When Marie stood in that living room, watching her boys' worlds crumble, Rob's voice echoed in her head with startling clarity.

"It became my North Star," Marie said.

The early days blurred together in a haze of impossible tasks. Marie went into "functioning mode" — moving through the motions just to get by.

When someone needed to identify Rob's body, she knew it had to be her. Taking her boys with her, they spent a few days in Perth before boarding the flight Rob was supposed to take home.

"It hit me unexpectedly hard coming home to the empty house," she said. "That was the hardest part of it."

But Marie had been here before. This time, she had Rob's voice as her compass and two little boys who needed her to find a way forward.

"I tried to find that one piece of joy in every day, in every moment," she said.

"I was actively seeking joy... It's not that I was trying to avoid the grief. It was me trying to create space for joy and happiness and therefore healing as well."

It's a radical approach in a world that expects grief to be all-consuming.

"Even after someone dies, life still holds the full spectrum of emotions — grief and love, sadness and joy."

Marie has gone on to write four books about her grief journey. Image: Marie Alessi.

Choosing light in the darkness.

Two months after Rob's death, she made a decision that raised eyebrows: they would travel the world for two months, a modified version of the year-long adventure she and Rob had been planning.

"I took them away from all the first milestones that were too hard without their dad — the first Christmas, the first New Year's, the first birthdays," she said.

"I needed to take them away from that and create some more lightness.

"You can't take the grief away, but you can add more lightness to it."

That philosophy, "bringing lightness into grief", has become Marie's mission. She's now a keynote speaker, has given a TEDx talk on redefining widowhood, and is preparing to release her fourth book, My Person Died. What Now? She'll share her story on stage at Stories That Stir at the Sydney Opera House in October.

"I just see him cheering me on like he always used to do," she said.

"He's really just freaking proud of how I navigated all of it."

Seven years later, her boys have grown into "amazing" teenagers, their emotional intelligence shaped by loss but not defined by it.

And in quiet moments, when doubt creeps in or the path forward seems unclear, Marie still hears Rob's voice: "I want you to create the happiest life possible for the boys and you."

Her North Star, guiding her home.

Feature image: Supplied.