I went on my honeymoon alone... just weeks after my fiancee had died in my arms: LAURA MURPHY

By LAURA MURPHY FOR THE DAILY MAIL I had wanted to go to Castellina in Chianti ever since I met Devon O’Grady. His family had holidayed in the Tuscan village when he was a child, and he loved it; he had shown me many photos of its narrow, cobbled streets and gorgeous views. I’d watched Devon grow up in those pictures, from a teenager in ill-fitting shorts to the kind, handsome, fun-loving and brilliant man I would marry. So, Castellina was the obvious choice for our honeymoon. When I finally reached the ancient, stone palazzo near the top of a hill where he had stayed and gazed down at the vineyards below, it was everything I could have hoped for. There was only one thing missing – Devon. A month before our wedding, the love of my life had died in my arms. So, here I was on honeymoon – alone. The day I met Devon I was running late for an interview at a law firm in St John’s, Newfoundland, the island where we both grew up. When I got to the office, the lift was out of order. I had to walk up an emergency concrete stairwell to the 12th floor. By the time I got there I was drenched in sweat, wearing a thick coat and lugging a heavy backpack. Worse, the metal door was locked – and I couldn’t even ring for help as my phone had died. I hammered at the door. Nothing. I pounded on it again. And then someone opened the door. It was Devon. A man with gorgeous blue eyes and flowing brown hair that curled up at his collar. He had far more style than your average Newfoundland lawyer. He took me to my meeting and made me feel I was looking sharp, and perfect for the job. That was Devon. Kind. Positive. Reassuring. Two hours after the interview I got an offer: as a summer trainee lawyer. The first person I saw on my first day four months later was that stylish young lawyer. ‘Backpack Girl!’ he yelled. He had a nickname for everybody. The day I met Devon I was running late for an interview at a law firm in St John’s, Newfoundland, the island where we both grew up I could see the other associates chuckling, but it took a week before one admitted: ‘Yeah, we were wondering about you, Backpack Girl. He’s been asking about you for months.’ I saw Devon every day. I worked on the 11th floor, he worked on the 12th, but we always seemed to bump into each other. He was finishing his year of articling, a post-grad requirement in Canada before you are licensed as a lawyer. He’d made a lot of friends at work. They teased him about his raw vegetable lunches: I’d sometimes see him biting into a green pepper as if it was an apple, or chomping the end off a cucumber. Everyone made fun of him, but he didn’t care. He was comfortable with who he was. On Fridays, the associates gathered for drinks at the Salt House, a restaurant down the street. I was still the new girl, but Devon was at the centre of everything. With a few words, a quick joke, he would bring people in, make them feel noticed. And when he looked at me, it was like a light. I could feel the heat, something coming alive. One day, Devon asked me if I wanted to watch the sunrise. Whoa, did I hear him right? To watch the sun... rise? No-one does that. The days are long in June in Newfoundland. I checked my weather app. The sun rose at 5.02am. We would have to get up at 4am to see it. That’s insane. Or utterly romantic. I said yes, of course. It was dark when he picked me up. He handed me a flask of hot coffee and we headed for the cliffs above the harbour. Dawn was turning the edges of the waves bright white as they smashed beneath us. We watched the sun rise over the lip of the North Atlantic without a word, the sky brightening from purple to red to pinkish-blue. As the sun cleared the water, Devon pulled something from his pocket. It was a small wooden heart with the word ‘time’ scrawled on it. It had been given to him by his cousin’s grandfather, who had told him: ‘Time is the most precious thing we have. Spend it wisely.’ It was the beginning of a connection that changed my life. Even after he died, the pain I felt was a reflection of the joy we shared, in every way. Devon paid attention to everything about me, to all the things I liked and didn’t like, to all the signals I didn’t know I was giving him. Sex and affection were easy and I trusted him completely. Making me happy, making me feel free to be myself was what made Devon happy. There was nothing I couldn’t say to him, nothing I didn’t think he’d understand. Devon had made sure the ring was special. He had gathered the gold from old family jewellery and helped design it. We were travelling to Arizona for a holiday with my family and I knew he was going to propose to me there. We’d been dating for nearly two years by now. We knew we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. In the end it happened in a cheapo hotel in the Canadian city of Mississauga, where we’d checked in after our flights got messed up. I was in bed, dishevelled, with the sheet piled around me, when I saw Devon drop to one knee. He held out a box. I knew it was the ring. He made a speech. I’m sure it was a good one: spontaneous, funny, heartfelt. I didn’t hear it because I was bawling my eyes out. I broke down in tears again on the plane to London. At Heathrow I stood as an endless stream of strangers rushed past and couldn’t figure out what to do next. Experts call it grief brain. I stood there for a whole 30 minutes, according to my phone, and I can’t tell you a single thing I did. Eventually, it came to me. London. I’m in London. I need to find my hotel. I bought a SIM card for my phone, found a Tube map and boarded the train. I popped up into cold rain – hello London! – a few blocks from where I was staying. I was proud of myself. I’d made it into the very heart of London. Take that, grief brain! I collapsed into bed, mentally and physically exhausted. My friends and family hadn’t believed I would actually make this trip. Neither had I. Just months earlier I’d been a 28-year-old lawyer with two dogs, a three-bedroom house and a fiance I was madly in love with. I was so happy. Then Devon died. I had one concrete thing in my future: a one-way ticket to London, the first stop on the European honeymoon (Pictured in Ireland in 2024) I like the person I have become. She’s stronger, more open with her feelings and willing to say what she thinks For days at a time, I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to shower. I wanted to lie still, thinking about Devon. Looking at pictures of him on my phone. My friends and family were worried and afraid. Eventually, I, too, began to worry. I started to feel that if I didn’t get up soon, I never would. I had one concrete thing in my future: a one-way ticket to London, the first stop on the European honeymoon – taking in France and Italy, too – that Devon and I had planned. I wanted to be in the places he and I would have visited, doing the things we would have done. When I woke up in my London hotel room it was dark. I was hungry, so I forced myself out of the door to find something to eat. A pub, maybe. On the way I set myself a goal: to talk to somebody other than the staff. I failed. I sat at my little table and watched other people laughing and chatting with their dates and mates. I had travelled many times before, but never like this. The next day, I went to an American fast-food place because it was near and there was a queue. I liked knowing I wasn’t the only one eating chicken wings in London. Back at the hotel I started working on a TikTok video. I’d promised to keep my friends and family updated on my travels and thought this would be the easiest way. My first post was one minute, 18 seconds long. It was a series of mundane moments – the airport, the plane, the Tube, street scenes, my food. It took me three hours to splice it together. I was so tired by the end, I did the voiceover in one take. ‘My fiance died a month before our wedding,’ it started, ‘and now I’m going on our honeymoon alone to see if life is worth living.’ The next day it had 600,000 views. The day after that it had two million. As I charted my journey and gained followers, I had four million people cheering me on. Of course there were negative comments: one girl said I was a fraud, that if I had truly loved Devon I wouldn’t be on vacation, I’d be home in bed or dead. That’s what she’d do: if her partner died, she’d kill herself. But mostly, I was overwhelmed by how kind the world could be. I was invited to a lot of things by a lot of strangers (including a trip backstage at a West End show). A lot of men – a shocking amount –offered to buy me a pint. I was also contacted by young women like me who had lost partners and understood how it felt to be adrift on an ocean of grief when your friends are getting engaged, buying houses, having babies. I arranged to meet a woman called Justine in a park, where we sat on a bench. Across the way, a little boy was playing with a puppy. ‘We were together for a couple of years,’ Justine began. ‘We were in love.’ Just like us. They’d been on holiday when her partner got out of bed in the middle of the night. Then he stopped, stood at the foot of the bed and collapsed. ‘His heart stopped,’ she said. ‘It just stopped. No one can give me a reason why.’ While we were talking, a young father came to collect the boy and his puppy. They were walking away, the father’s hand on the boy’s shoulder. The waves were crashing over me, pounding away at the rocks of my heart. Here one minute. Gone the next. No little boy for our loved ones, no hand on a young son’s shoulder. We'd planned the French leg of our honeymoon with my best friend Reb and her fiance Kyle. The four of us got on so well, I remember thinking we’d travel together for ever. Now it was just three of us. We took the train to Monaco, with its harbour full of yachts. I followed Kyle and Reb, watching them walk hand in hand, and drifted into a fog of grief. So often, Reb’s company had kept me whole. But seeing her with Kyle broke me apart. It wasn’t their fault. They included me. They comforted me. They stayed away from triggering acts and conversations. But when they bickered the way couples on vacation do, I thought, why waste your precious time together on that? When they discussed renovations to their new house, I thought, who cares? Oh, Devon, you would have loved the Cote d’Azur. You would have loved the water, the colours, the company of good friends. It was always people that mattered most. ‘It’s beautiful, Laura,’ I could almost hear you whisper. ‘It’s beautiful here. But not as beautiful as you.’ The day before he died, we had celebrated Devon’s 32nd birthday with my family. When I thought about it later, I realised we didn’t sing Happy Birthday and I hated that. I had one last chance to sing Happy Birthday to Devon, and I wasted it. ‘What a great day,’ he said as he drifted off to sleep. He said that at the end of almost every day. He was still out on his run when I woke up at 6.15 the next morning. As we left home, he tried to kiss me and I turned away. I had my client-meeting lipstick on. These little details, these last mistakes, I hate them. On the drive to work, Devon was not his usual, exuberant self. He had an important Zoom call and he was nervous. No, not nervous. Focused. His office was opposite mine. Just before 11am, I heard Devon say quite clearly: ‘I’m sorry, I have to pause for a second.’ I came out of my office. He was in the hall, leaning against a door frame. His eyes were a little wild. ‘I can’t breathe,’ he said. I thought he was having a panic attack. ‘Let’s go into your office,’ I said. And then he was on the floor. I didn’t see him go down. I just remember him sitting with his knees up on the floor of his office, leaning against a filing cabinet. His assistant said she was calling an ambulance. I sat down next to him and put my arm around him. He was inhaling so hard it sounded like moaning. I didn’t know it, but an aortic aneurysm had ruptured. His chest cavity was filling up with blood. ‘It’s OK, Devon,’ I said. ‘Relax. You’re going to be OK.’ His head was down. His breath was becoming violent. I saw his face go white, then he collapsed on to his side. I must have screamed, because suddenly there were people everywhere. Devon was lying ash-white on his office floor. I could hear one of the partners screaming: ‘Where’s the ambulance? Where’s the goddamn ambulance?’ Then my mother was there. And my sister. The paramedics, the police. Eventually, my sister asked me softly: ‘Do you want to see him, Laura?’ She led me down the hall to Devon’s office. Yellow police tape was across the door. Devon was lying on his back, his arms at his sides. It was the last time I would ever see his face. I went over it all in my mind. What if I’d called an ambulance immediately? What if I hadn’t tried to calm him? It wouldn’t have mattered, the doctors told me. If this had happened on an operating table Devon would still have died. I didn’t believe them. It was me. That’s what I thought on so many of my endless nights, as I lay crying with Devon’s face, his ash-white face, inside my head. I was there. I was holding him. He looked at me. His eyes, they pleaded with me. The question wasn’t why. It was how. How could I have let him go? Devon's father David had booked me an apartment for a week in Castellina. Devon was with me every day of my time in Italy. No, every second. In Italy, his absence was heightened, since these were his places. When I passed a ‘For Sale’ sign on a building, I thought of how he dreamed of bringing our children here. ‘Let’s buy it,’ I could hear him whisper. Why not? When I walked down a street, I felt his presence. He had sat in this cathedral, he had walked this turning of the road, had run his hand against this wall. These things were hundreds of years old; they had not changed since he had seen them. Devon had always said he loved the gelato in Italy, so I ate it in his honour every afternoon. I always chose three flavours, so I could try as many as possible, although I suspect Devon would have ordered the same thing every day: affogato, a scoop of ice cream with coffee poured over. When I walked down a street, I felt his presence. He had sat in this cathedral, he had walked this turning of the road (Laura and her brother in Castellina in 2025) One day I went to a butcher’s shop where Devon had told me, many times, about the best burger he had ever eaten, ground fresh and cooked to order, served standing at the counter. I’d seen a photograph of Devon standing right there, with a haunch of ham in the background. I suppose most visitors remember Italy for its architecture or museums. I remember those things, too, and the window in my bedroom, framing an ever-changing view of Tuscany. But I cherish the memories of gelato and the butcher’s shop. I was miserable in my first weeks back from Europe. I cannot lie about that. The first anniversary of Devon’s birthday, his death, then our wedding date, knocked me flat. My resolve collapsed. That is the reality of grief. There is no end. There is no ‘healed’. Learning to live with joy again is a process, a journey of stops and starts, but step by step I am embracing my life as it is now. I keep in touch with many of the women who contacted me, including Justine. We live in a connected world, and connection matters. I have great friends. They invite me to dinner. We go hiking. Every sixth day of the month – the date Devon died – we gather for a run. My female friendships have brought me back to life. I like the person I have become. She’s stronger, more open with her feelings and willing to say what she thinks. I grew into her because I went abroad, because I acted. I learned to be my best, to believe in myself, on my honeymoon alone. Adapted from The Solo Honeymoon, by Laura Murphy (Leap, £18.99). © Laura Murphy 2026. To order a copy for £17.09 (offer valid to 25/07/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.