After major heart surgery, Stan Shepherd took early retirement and devoted his days to his wife Susan, who had gone back to work full-time.
He would have a hot meal ready for her coming home, a bath run each night, and frequently made her smile with his self-deprecating sense of humour.
"Stan was a character," Susan, 74, said. "He was a great husband to me."
After Stan's death in 2010, Susan found herself carefully storing away precious mementos from their 40 years of marriage – Stan's wedding band, her own wedding and engagement rings, even a pair of his shoes.
These were among the items Susan found to be missing after a thief ransacked her Aberdeen home in August last year. Stan's ashes were also disturbed.
"I've nothing of him now," Susan said. "They can't be replaced. Whatever he did with them – and that's a question I'd love to ask him, did he sell them in the pub, £20 a piece or something? To me it was just my lifetime's precious bits and pieces."
In 2023-24, housebreakings accounted for 8% of crimes of dishonesty in Scotland, with 9,033 recorded.
Susan agreed to speak to BBC Scotland News to describe the significant impact of the break-in.
She said the sentimental items could never be replaced, and described the crime as a "violation" of what should have been her safe space.
She also spoke out in the hope she could somehow one day get even some of her treasured belongings back if someone had bought or found them after the crime.
