CECILIA Moore, said she had her future mapped out with her partner Seamus Ruddy, before it was taken from her when he was murdered and secretly buried in France in 1985.
Finally laid to rest in his native Newry last weekend, following a 32-year search for his remains, she said the funeral was a "sad time of reflection" on the life they'd both missed out on.
"It was not a nice feeling at all, people say there's closure but that's not how it feels to me, it's just very final," said Ms Moore.
The couple had been living in Paris for just over a year when the 32-year-old disappeared, having been brutally murdered by members of a rival faction of the INLA.
The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims Remains, discovered his body last month, this came after a number of failed searches.
Information on the spot he had been secretly buried in the picturesque forest at Pont-de-l'Arche near Rouen, had came from one of the men who murdered Mr Ruddy, he had travelled to France to pinpoint the exact location.
Originally from the Isle of Man, Ms Moore first met Seamus Ruddy in Dublin in the early 1980s, when he was involved in political activism around the Maze prison protests.
"Seamus wanted to get married and have children, all the traditional things," said Ms Moore.
"That was all taken from him and from me as well.
"He was very politically active, very passionate, he was the type of person would motivate everyone around him.
"When you felt you'd achieved all you could Seamus was the type of person would push you on a just that little further, but in a nice way, he would urge you to find your potential."
Ms Moore had left Paris for a course in Cork in March 1985 and had planned to return in June, she was in constant contact with her partner, prior to his sudden disappearance in May.
"I first knew something had happened when his friends rang me and asked had I seen him, that someone said he'd left Paris and came back to Ireland, we would travel by ferry and train and so that would take a few days so originally I was waiting on him turning him.
"Because of his situation in Ireland, he'd a charge hanging over him, I thought maybe he was trying to quietly enter Ireland so I just waited. He always knew I was going to Paris in June and so four weeks later I thought, if he is in hiding he'll come out and show himself when I arrive.
"I kept to my plans thinking he would come and find me, but I had a bad feeling. I think his friends in Paris were quite scared, they didn't understand what had happened and were almost afraid to say it out loud."
Ms Moore did report her partner missing and later arranged to meet a man she believed had knowledge about his disappearance.
"I asked lots of questions and people kept giving me the same name so I contacted this person.
"I said I'm going to report it to police, but he said 'don't report it and I'll get someone to come and speak to you' and he set this meeting up.
"When I met the second man in a library he was trying to blame it on the other side, but one side I did believe and the man I met in the library I did not.
"So when I came back from France at the end of June I went public with it.
"People would say he's hiding and I wanted to believe that, it felt nicer to think he was alive, but I knew, I could feel he was gone.
"We wanted to have children and he wanted to get married, that's all gone, his future, his children, both our futures were lost with his death. That's not to say when I see people that remind me of him I still think, maybe, but then I have to tell myself no he's gone.
"He would want to be remembered as a republican socialist, a passionate campaigner, not some victim, he'd have hated that," Ms Moore added.
