Days of long hours sitting working over a couple of laptops and large screen are back. Between Skype calls, silence is broken by intermittent deep breaths and comments how bad the bandwidth is. The heavy weight of stress looms.

Those glorious, carefree nine days of our Tenerife holiday are a precious memory. We were there for 14 days but it took you five days to reconcile yourself with work, telling me all about the reasoning behind the stress. It became unimportant so no more was mentioned. You'd talked it out. I understood.

Now life for you had returned to basics that the most significant question you'd ask was "what's for lunch? what's for dinner?" So that every meal was planned in my head well in advance. I did not miss that when eating out every evening in Tenerife.

Yesterday afternoon you put your arm around me during coffee break. You'd worked out it would be our last evening together for a week and said "Let me finish off going through this presentation and we can have an evening together". Your arm was warm and comforting and the anguish I felt, diminished.

Hopes up. Dinner was planned—baked vegetables with bacon and your favourite, cheese on top. Any meal with cheese was a winner. And an apple crumble with lemon curd yoghurt to finish.

Ready by half 6, you came to down the stairs in anticipation—you weren't disappointed. After eating, you left a while later to go back to the office to "finish off"—always a bad sign. You played the guitar first. Dishes were done. And I waited. Eight came and went. Nine came and went.

I decided to heat up the apple crumble, not good to eat late so tucked in. At 9:45 you came down the stairs looking sheepish. You've that look that says "I'm not finished".

I was getting tired, too many late nights—so ready to call it quits, disappointed that the evening wasn't as expected. You heated your apple crumble up and scoffed it and licked the bowl clean with your finger, like you always do.

You went upstairs and played the guitar again for a bit before settling into work with your nerves calmed.

But I understood. I nearly always did. As I woke up at 1am I could hear your office chair squeak and roll on the wooden floor as you worked.

I wondered how many times you disappointed your wife and your daughters, when you'd actually said you'd be somewhere or do something with them but it didn't happen because of one thing or the other, though mostly because of work. Such is your appetite to finish what you've started regardless of what's been said.

But each time we've held our disappointment. Someone would roll their eyes, though accepted it. Knowing that when you did have time, you would give your 100%.

But when would you learn to not say those things you couldn't keep—the disappointment would be less and the memory not so keen.