Todd Dutiaume has paid an emotional to his wife Kelly and their unborn twins, telling mourners: “Life will never be the same again.”
The funeral of the ”absolutely selfless” young mother, who died just weeks before she was due to give birth to the twins, was held in Fife on Friday.
Several hundred mourners gathered to pay their respects to Kelly. The 38-year-old wife of Fife Flyers player-coach Todd died suddenly on February 27.
Family, friends, colleagues and well-wishers from the ice hockey world attended the funeral at Kirkcaldy Crematorium, where her coffin was carried into the service behind a ”Little Angels” floral arrangement in memory of her twins, Josh and Melissa, who were also lost.
Fighting back tears, Mr Dutiaume movingly told how he had lost his ”best friend” and the ”most caring woman” he had ever met.
As he thanked the Kirkcaldy community for their support, he said: ”The first time I set eyes on her, I knew she was something special. She was a quiet, uncomplicated woman … she was absolutely selfless.
”Two weeks ago I said: ‘What would you do if we won the lottery?’ She said she would take care of others.”
Todd continued: “I’ve been to some pretty dark places over the last week, but I realise how fortunate I’ve been to have met her. We had that winning lottery ticket in our hands all along, but it was wrenched from our hands and life will never be the same again.
”She has left memories and our daughter Olivia, a beautiful girl who gets more like her every day.
“I love you. I miss you.”
Civil celebrant Dennis Madden told how Kelly, the only child of Jim and the late Jackie Hamilton, had lived in Kirkcaldy all her life.
A ”lovely, quiet girl,” the former Torbain Primary and Kirkcaldy High pupil ”excelled” at school and graduated from Heriot Watt University with an honours degree in economics.
She worked at the Halifax then HBOS, and only stopped working for a pharmaceutical prescribing team with the NHS after coming off on maternity leave a few weeks ago.
Mr Madden told how when she and Todd started going out ”they just knew it was right,” and love blossomed.
They married in 2005 and when Olivia was born in 2008, Kelly came into her own through the ”joy and pleasure” of motherhood.
The service heard the couple were ”overjoyed” to discover Kelly was expecting twins in April. The pregnancy seemed straightforward. Then ”the whole world was turned upside down” when Kelly collapsed and nothing could be done to save her.
Mr Madden said: ”It’s difficult to make sense of this tragedy when Kelly should be at home now blooming as a wife and mother.
”She was a young lady of so many talents. An ordinary lady in so many ways, and yet an extraordinary lady in so many ways.
”She was most content when with her family. They were her main hobby. Her life, her focus. She was an amazing mum, daughter and wife.”
Mr Madden invited mourners to pause and remember their own special memories of Kelly as the tannoy played the James Blunt song, Goodbye My Lover.
Members of Fife Fire and Rescue Service, with whom Mr Dutiaume serves as a firefighter, also paid their respects.
Mourners streamed out to the Coldplay Song, Paradise, as an earlier downpour gave way to rays of comforting spring sunshine.
Donations from the funeral will go to Ronald McDonald House in Glasgow and Yorkhill Royal Hospital for Sick Children, causes which were close to Kelly’s heart.Fans will pay silent tributeFrom the many hundreds of messages that have been posted on the Fife Flyers’ Facebook page offering condolences, to the hundreds of ice hockey fans who attended a moving and dignified candlelit vigil in memory of Kelly at Fife Ice Arena last Friday evening, the close links between the Fife Flyers and Kirkcaldy have never been more pronounced than during the past week.
The sympathy and support for Todd and his family, who flew in from Canada last week, and for Kelly’s father Jim, has been overwhelming.
Those heartfelt sentiments from fans will be nowhere more evident than this evening when Fife Flyers fans pay silent tribute to Kelly and the twins before the game against Dundee CCS Stars.
Their coach might well be absent, but the message from fans is that they are with him all the way.