Amen Brother! 
It's very beautiful how much you love your wife and I have nothing to add except that. It's your journey and it's you who matters. 
That is all very true.
I think I ought to say something, because people might get the wrong impression.
My husband was an alcoholic, and he drank himself to death over 20 or more years. In the process he did a lot of harm to myself and to our daughter, but I minimised this harm as much as I could by first of all asking him to leave and then divorcing him.
I am Anglo Catholic, so I did not ever date anyone while h was alive, and to his credit, neither did he. But he did hurt a lot of people, over a long time. At first I found it hard to be in the same room with him, but over the years as his health deteriorated the anger went and I felt very sorry for him, and for everything that he had thrown away. He died when our d was 18, and he will not see her graduate, or marry, and he will never know his grandchildren, if she is blessed with a family.
He died last year. When I spoke to my priest about this he said that in God's eyes, and in his, I am a widow. I don't usually use that word; I use the word relict; the remaining partner. My memories now are of the early days; the days which were full of promise and happiness, when h was young, and full of life. Before he destroyed his health beyond retrieval.
When he was dying I arranged for him to have the last rites on our daughter's behalf, because I had discussed it with him some months before, and it was what he wanted. His mother and sister were furious, because they thought that the mother was his next of kin, and could veto that. She couldn't. She is not religious at all; when h was confirmed at my church she refused to come, saying she would not cross the road to go to the service, because it meant nothing to her. That gives an idea of the kind of woman she is.
At the funeral she refused to let my d have any part, or contribute anything, and she only got a passing mention. D sat at the back, with me and a family friend. It was a complete disgrace.
The day after h died d wanted to go to his home, to visit. His mother and sister refused, and when I insisted they said that there was nothing there; they had already gutted the place and taken everything of value. He had not been dead a day. They handed me a carrier bag at the funeral, with photographs and two or three trinkets in it, for our d. They kept everything else, even though it ought to have belonged to her.
Since the funeral neither of them have had anything to do with my d, who is the only granddaughter. Nothing. It is as if d died with her dad. His mother blames me for his drinking, needless to say, but he was a very heavy drinker long before I knew him. When we met I said I wanted him not to drink so much, and he said he had cut down a lot. Really he only hid it, but I was too naive to know that. I would know now.
Anyway, this is a very long way of saying what I wanted to, which is this. H had problems, lots of them. He was a very troubled man, and in the end it was impossible to save him, although we did what we could, when we could. I regularly ordered shopping for him online, if he lost his phone I ordered him a new one, and we put credit on it if he ran short, if he had no food at all, I ordered takeaways for him. Once his ambulance did not turn up to take him to hospital and he lost his hospital bed, so I rang and rearranged the admission and then ordered him a taxi and got him into hospital the same day, and he was there for three weeks. I did what I could. When he was dying I wanted to bring him home, but d would not have that, and my priest said I couldn't do it; my own health is fragile.
The reason I will not remarry is not because our marriage was idyllic; it wasn't. It is because I do not think I could make such vows twice in one lifetime, and because I do not want to disown h before the whole company of heaven. When I enter eternity, he will be there, as he was before; young and whole, and without the damage caused by the alcoholism. That is the person I still love, and that is who I look forward to seeing again, one day.
The worst part of the whole thing is that our d does not remember that person. She remembers only the past few years, and the terrible nightmare that we lived through. She does not remember her dad as he once was. I may be the only person who does.
