Mike Stuckey's wife Ellen died of breast cancer aged just 46. In the second of three special reports, Women's Editor Christen Pears discovers how he coped with her illness and death.

AFTER his wife died, Mike Stuckey couldn't remember anything about their life together. He couldn't recall the places they'd been, the things they'd done; it was a complete blank.

"It was terrible, absolutely terrible. I was trying so hard to remember but the shock just wiped everything out. It took a long time to get over that," he says.

Almost three years on, Ellen's presence fills their house in Coulby Newham, near Middlesbrough. The outgoing Australian smiles out from the photographs dotted about the living room - with Mike, with their children, at parties, on country walks. It isn't remotely morbid, it's simply a way of remembering and celebrating the life of a remarkably brave woman.

The couple, who were married for 19 years, met when Ellen's brother married Mike's sister. Her first husband had recently died of a brain tumour and her youngest daughter was just six weeks old. She came over from Australia for the wedding and they hit if off immediately.

"People kept asking me how I could even think about marrying a woman who already had two children but I knew she was the one. You sit and talk about your future and getting old together. You build your family. You never expect anything like this to happen. Never."

According to Mike, who is now 43, Ellen was the sort of woman who checked her breasts regularly. "She was Australian and they're all very health conscious," he says with a wry smile. She didn't find a lump but she had started to notice irregularities in her breast, and her nipple began to invert.

"She told me she was going for a mammogram and I asked if she wanted me to go with her. I thought it was just a routine thing but the surgeon called us in and told us Ellen had cancer. It was the biggest shock of my life but she said she had expected it."

Ellen was diagnosed just weeks before she was due to return to Australia for her sister's wedding. She and Mike were also going to renew their wedding vows.

"That was the biggest disappointment for her - the fact she couldn't go back to Australia - but it was the only time I saw her like that," he says.

Less than a fortnight after her diagnosis, she had a mastectomy at South Tees Hospital, followed by a five-month course of chemotherapy. Mike remembers her regaining her strength quite quickly, and she went back to work part-time as a workplace assessor for GNVQ.

"That was a really positive step after the chemo. She wanted her life to get back to normal but we did ask what the chances were of the cancer coming back. The surgeon said she would do well if it didn't."

But Ellen had a positive outlook. She was looking better than ever, Mike recalls, and the couple thought everything was going well until she started to complain about a pain in her arm. X-rays showed the cancer had come back with a vengeance.

"She had an operation to remove the cancer and had a plate put into her arm, but that was the beginning of the end. I knew I had to be positive because it's what Ellen wanted. She was convinced she was going to beat it but, at the back of my mind, I knew I was going to lose her. There are things I would have loved to have said to her at the time but I didn't because of the type of person she was and the way she wanted to handle it. It would have made it hard for her."

At the time, Ellen's daughters from her first marriage were 21 and 19, while the sons she and Mike had together were 17 and eight.

"Even at the end, when Ellen was in hospital and she must have known she was going to die, she was more worried about what was going to happen to me and the children.

"I couldn't understand how she could be so calm but people handle it in very different ways. There were people on the ward who would cry all the time, terrified about dying, but Ellen wasn't like that. She wanted to protect the kids and be strong for them."

Ellen's condition deteriorated rapidly and there was nothing Mike could do but watch his once exuberant wife slowly succumb to the cancer. She spent a month in the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough before she died.

"When I came back from the hospital that night, I just felt like finishing everything but that's the coward's way out. I sat back and looked at how brave she had been and I knew I had to carry on, especially for the kids. I know it's what she would have wanted."

His despair gave way to anger and he admits he looked for someone to blame - the oncologists, doctors, nurses, even himself.

"I kept thinking, 'Why me? Why my family?' I kept thinking there must have been something else someone could have done, but there wasn't. You can have all the money in the world, the best doctors but if you've got an aggressive cancer, there's nothing you can do about it."

For the last two-and-a-half years, Mike has slowly rebuilt his life and although he says he's come to terms with her death, Ellen is still very much a part of it.

The family erected a bench in her name in Pinchinthorpe Woods, looking up towards Roseberry Topping, where she used to enjoy walking and Mike has raised money for charity in her name.

"After she died one of my colleagues realised I was down and he suggested I started a fund for Ellen. We've done a couple of charity walks and raised £3,000 for the hospital.

"It's not a huge amount but we used some of it to help pay for complementary therapies which Ellen benefited from and for televisions and videos to keep the kids amused while their mums are in hospital. Knowing that I'm helping others gives me a sense of purpose. It's what helps me get through and it means that Ellen didn't die in vain."