A WIDOW is urging people to “always kiss loved ones goodnight” after finding her husband dead on the sofa – the morning after a row.
When dad-of-three Mikey Murrell, 36, rolled in from a 16-hour shift, Ashley , 33, argued with him, worried he was running himself into the ground.
She said: “Losing Mikey has changed my perspective on life. Life is too short to go to bed angry and not to spend every moment you can with your family.
“I felt so guilty. I was so angry with myself for making him sleep on the sofa. I still find it hard to think my last words to him were in anger.”
Ashley and Mikey moved in together in 2008, a week after hitting it off in a bar.
After they married in 2010, Mikey adopted Ashley’s daughter Morgan, 14, and the couple had twins Mikey and Lisa in 2013.
AWFUL
Mikey worked 16-hour shifts, seven days a week cleaning carpets, said beautician Ashley, who has now marked herself as “in a relationship” with Mikey’s brother Chris on social media.
She later learned Mikey was putting in the hours to save up and take her to Prague. She added: “When I found out he’d been saving to take us on an anniversary holiday it was awful – heartbreaking doesn’t begin to cover it.”
Speaking of the night he died on May 17 at their former home in Uckfield, East Sussex, She said: “That night he was a mess, I’ve never seen him so exhausted.
“I couldn’t stand seeing him like it and I got angry. I was sick of it. I had a go at him and told him to sleep on the sofa.
“When I saw him next morning, he was lying exactly where I left him and his face was discoloured – he looked grey. I touched him but he was cold.
“I started screaming, ‘Your dad’s dead’ to my 14-year-old and ran into the street screaming, ‘Mikey’s dead’. I blacked out. It felt so surreal. I didn’t feel like he was dead, I felt like he had left me.”
Ashley claims a post-mortem revealed Mikey, who was laid to rest on June 8, choked in his sleep but the cause of death is officially so far “inconclusive”. mirrornews@mirror.co.uk