Three-year-old Sadie says that Dadda talks with his eyes. An eye gaze computer sounds less romantic. I'll ask his eyes she says when she wants something. He loves me! she exclaims like a surprise present. Love like a present is the gift we share from him. I hold it fiercely. His magnificent heart. My husband is a wonder to me but he is hard to find. I search for him in our home. He breathes through a pipe in his throat. He feels everything but cannot move a muscle. I lie on his chest counting mechanical breaths. I hold his hand but he doesn't hold back. His darting eyes are the only windows left. I won't stop searching. My soul demands it and so does his. Simon has motor neurone disease, but that's not the dilemma, at least not today. Be brave.

I am sitting in my car in Wicklow town, looking out on the harbor. I'm watching these yacht masts dancing. Their heads are swaying to and fro, warbling along to Joni Mitchell on the radio. Wicklow harbor is nice. It's vast and full of blue. It has a higher, wider reach than the Greystones view. I feel as though I can't breathe in Greystones right now, so Wicklow is good. Maybe Greystones is like all great loves. You either marvel at every familiar dancing step and soak it into your bones or, like today, the familiar edges trip you up and annoy the shit out of you. Too claustrophobic – a rat in a cage, a lift with no panic button.

We have lost many things. But sometimes I find my husband: lips on the curve of his temple, a crawl space in the crook of his arm. Some things are lost and found again. I email him words of love, and he emails back. A mad moon tidal wave. Screen to screen, we're holding hands at last. Two souls. It's a marvelous, familiar dance. Great loves are for the brave.

Excerpted from I FOUND MY TRIBE by Ruth Fitzmaurice with permission from Bloomsbury Publishing, © Ruth O'Neill Fitzmaurice, 2017