I met my dream man while grieving an ex but he died too on our WEDDING day & he was hiding a sick secret that floored me

STARING at the screenshot message, widow Kaitlin Palmieri’s blood ran cold. Three years after the love of her life died on their wedding day, here was the proof. Kaitlin’s almost-husband had been hiding a terrible secret from her. “I realised in a flash that our whole relationship had been a lie,” she says. His betrayal seemed unimaginable from the man she had first met on a dating app back in February 2018.

“The minute we began talking I knew that this chatty, handsome guy was special,” Kaitlin says. Over the next two months Kaitlin, now 39, felt herself falling for Eric. “I was developing real feelings for him, which meant telling him about the hardest experience of my life,” she says. “As we sat on the sofa together on evening, I nervously turned to him and said, ‘I need to tell you about Mike.’”.

In 2015 the New York school psychologist had been madly in love with Mike, a man she was sure that she’d marry. “But on my 30th birthday, when my parents threw me a party at their house, there was a terrible accident,” she recalls. Hearing someone scream Mike’s name, Kaitlin ran down the garden and saw Mike lying by the side of the pool. “My brother, who was right beside him and white with shock, explained that Mike had been  floating face down in the water,” she says.

“In hospital I prayed for him to recover. But with a broken neck there was nothing more they could do. “Watching his life support machine being turned off was agonising. I felt like my heart was breaking.”. As Kaitlin finished telling Eric the story, she looked at his face, nervous of how he might react. “Eric was amazing,” she says. “He opened up about his own life and we had such a deep conversation.

“Our relationship became so much stronger after that. Six months later we moved in together.”. In December 2019 Eric took Kaitlin to Central Park and dropped to one knee. “Seeing the ring on my finger was incredible,” she says. “I thought that after losing Mike I’d never find happiness again. But here I was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I felt giddy. “My friends and family were also thrilled. They loved Eric almost as much as I did, and after the tragedy of losing Mike, they loved seeing me so happy.”.

Shopping for dresses and picking menus, Kaitlin couldn’t wait for the big day. In August 2020 they sat down to their rehearsal dinner. “I couldn’t stop looking at Eric, excited that in just a few short hours we’d be husband and wife,” she recalls. “We kissed goodnight before heading to our own hotel rooms. We’d decided to keep with tradition and spend our last unmarried night apart.”. It was early next morning, her wedding day, when Kaitlin realised her phone was ringing.

She remembers: “I was so confused. Had I accidentally overslept? But even in my worst nightmares I couldn’t have imagined what I was about to hear. “My mum told me I needed to go down to the lobby. Her voice was so strange and serious. “I asked her to tell me why and there was a moment of silence that felt like it lasted forever. “Then she said ‘Eric died early this morning.’”. In shock and struggling to breathe, Kaitlin was carried back to her parent’s house. There she lay silently for hours.

“When I saw my beautiful wedding dress hanging there, unworn, it broke me,” she says. “I tore off my engagement ring and flung it across the room.”. The days ahead were an agonising blur. “Instead of being on honeymoon with my new husband I was standing at his funeral, my heart shattered into a million pieces,” Kaitlin says. I veered from furious to sick and dizzy, unable to catch my breath. “When I learned that Eric had died from a heart attack age 33, caused by an underlying health condition he hadn’t even known about, I struggled to process it.

“There were waves of anger, shock, physical pain. I felt them all.”. When Mike died, Kaitlin struggled to let other people help her in her grief. “This time I had therapy and joined support groups,” she says. “I read and wrote about grief and even shared my story online.”. The response was amazing, with people reaching out to offer her support. “Some even shared their own experiences, including one woman who told me about her own loss. We followed each other on Instagram,” she says.

Three years later, in 2023, Kaitin was still grieving. She says: “My wedding dress still hung on my wardrobe, and I still thought about the future Eric and I should have had together, the life that was so cruelly snatched away from me. “I’d kept the engagement ring and put in on for special occasions, times when I wanted to feel closer to him and honour what we had.”. Then, on what would have been Eric’s birthday in November 2023, Kaitlin was scrolling through Instagram when a post caught her attention.