“SOMETIMES I just tell myself that he is at work in the days, but when the night comes and I don’t hear the car it really breaks me and makes my body numb,” Jacqueline Carty-Letford told the Jamaica Observer as she reflected on the death of her husband, Detective Corporal Garfield Letford.

Letford, otherwise called Letty or Pope, died in hospital, ironically on February 14, Valentine’s Day, while undergoing treatment for injuries he sustained in a traffic collision.

For Carty-Letford, the high point of each day was hearing her husband’s car pull into their driveway at which time she would peek through a window at their house in Retreat Browns Town, St Ann to ensure that he had made it from work safely.

That, however, will never be her reality anymore and she is convinced that “Each day is getting harder.”

“I haven’t had a good sleep since the accident, and since his death it has been even worse. Even if I fall asleep I wake up as soon as it reaches 3:00 am because that is the time he passed away, so it is like my body is still in shock,” said Carty-Letford.

The detective constable was admitted to St Ann’s Bay Hospital after a crash on the Llandovery main road in St Ann on January 27, which left him seriously injured and unconscious. He was transferred to Kingston Public Hospital where he died.

Carty-Letford told the Observer that they shared an unbreakable bond. They were together for 25 years and married for 18 years of those years.

“We were together for so long that people even started to say we look like brother and sister and come April 15 it would be 19 years since we were married. We both loved each other so much. Each morning before he left he would hug and kiss me and tell me how much he loves me before going to work,” said the grieving widow.

“When it came on to his job, he took it seriously, he was the guy to rely on and a disciplinarian,” Letford’s aunt, Alice Hinds-McDonald, told the Observer.

Hinds-McDonald said the death of her nephew has taken a toll on her as well.

“He enjoyed life, and when you were around him he never let anyone feel uncomfortable. I remember going to the hospital to visit, it was so surreal seeing him in his condition. It broke my heart and I was praying that he would’ve come around,” said Hinds-McDonald as she reminisced on the moments they shared.

Similarly to his job, Letford took pride in his duty as a husband.

“He always said he is the man and he will take care of things, so even if there is a little problem he tried to hide it from me because he didn’t want me to be worried,” said Carty-Letford.

“Everybody loved him, especially his friends that he use to play dominoes with. It even took them a while to go back to their spot and play because they couldn’t manage to see that he was not there,” said the widow.

“We know that we all have to die, but when death comes it is so hard to accept,” she added