A woman has found her best friend and partner of 12 years dead in bed, just days after celebrating his 31st birthday.
Benjamin Hickey, 31, died suddenly in his sleep on January 22 as he lay next to his girlfriend at their home in Davoren Park, north Adelaide.
Amanda Johnston, 41, had woken up and continued her morning routine before trying to wake Mr Hickey and discovering his ‘fingers were purple’.
The couple had unknowingly spent their last night together watching movies in bed before Mr. Hickey uttered his final words: “Good night honey, I love you.”
Mrs Johnston believes he died of an enlarged heart – the same condition that claimed the life of Mr Hickey’s 19-year-old sister Ashleigh 11 years earlier.
Amanda Johnston, 41, has been left ‘lost’ after finding her partner of 12 years, Benjamin Hickey (both pictured), dead in their bed after he was suspected of succumbing to a heart condition
Their relationship blossomed after Mr Hickey ‘prodded’ Ms Johnston on Facebook and the relationship blossomed from there.
Mrs Johnston said she burst into tears the moment she realized what had happened to her soulmate and felt guilty for not doing more to help him.
‘I feel guilty because I feel like if I had heard or felt something, I could have tried to help him. I just don’t understand it.’ she said The advertiser.
‘I don’t know how to feel about it. I don’t know how to live without him. I don’t know my purpose in the world anymore.’
Despite losing the person she was supposed to ‘grow old with’, Mrs Johnstone tries to stay strong for Ashleigh’s 11-year-old daughter Felicity-Jayde.
The couple helped raise the young girl with Mr Hickey’s mother after Ashleigh’s death when she was just four months old.
Mrs Johnston had woken up and continued her morning routine before discovering that Mr Hickey’s fingers were ‘purple’, causing her to immediately break down and mourn the death of her partner.
The Hickey family also recently said their final goodbyes to Mr Hickey’s father, who died on Mother’s Day last year at the age of 72.
Ms Johnstone remembered her former partner as a ‘wonderful person with a good heart’ in a post on a GoFundMe to help pay for Mr. Hickey’s funeral.
“Ben was the love of my life, my life or death, my soulmate and I am so lost without him,” she wrote.
He was also known as a talented and knowledgeable angler who had started an online forum for fellow fanatics that grew to more than 5,000 members.