I also felt the pain she is going through, you don’t stop loving someone because you break up with them, I have had two boyfriends who I was still in love with when we broke up (one of them I still love, even though in a more platonic way), but in both cases it would have been destructive for us to keep up the relationship at that point. Both times it was a very hard decision to make, and if circumstances would have changed, it is very possible that I would have gotten back together with at least one of them (the other would have needed a total personality makeover before that would have been an option). Breakups are hard, no matter what, and they are harder when you still love someone than when you hate someone. I don’t know what the relationship between Michelle and Heath was at the time of his death, but it does seem to me as if they still loved each other. No matter what, Heath played a big and important role in Michelles life, and she has the right to grieve him, no matter wether they were together at the time of his death or not, no matter if they were married, engaged or “just” boyfriend and girlfriend.

None of us can know the state of Heath and Michelle’s relationship when they were a couple or after they split and it isn’t right to judge or question Michelle’s sincerity and obvious love for him. There is a world of difference between being in-love with someone, making a film with them (and an historic one at that), living with them, becoming engaged to them and having and raising a child with them over a period of three years – and ‘dating’ someone you’ve just met, which Heath and Michelle may have done in the few short months between their spilt and his untimely death.

Just because they had broken up doesn’t mean Michelle wasn’t still in-love with him or that they wouldn’t have reconciled had he lived.

I think also that given she was his long-time partner and fiance until a few months before he died and is the mother of his only child, whom she is now raising alone, Michelle should be afforded the respect one might reserve for a widow. There are always going to be exceptions. It’s polite, for a start. When couples are married and then divorce, even if years have passed since then, when one party dies, the other is often given a considered status at their funeral.

Michelle said when he died that her heart was broken. And the one person in the world who cared about her daughter as much as she does and had the same investment in her as Michelle does, is dead.

That really says it all: Heath’s death broke her heart.

Michelle bore a child to this man and shared that amazing experience. I wouldn’t think it strange if years from now she still felt some form of grief for him, for she will continue to see their child grow before her eyes, and will witness everything he didn’t get a chance to.

The thought of Michelle and her precious daughter being forced to endure multiple people taking their picture each day in these past two years as they were experiencing such grief, makes me sick to my stomach. I remember the picture of Heath Ledger’s body (in a body bag) being wheeled out of his home and the hordes of paparazzi camera flashes going off. Is nothing sacred?

I, too, would have screamed and yanked the cameras out of their hands and stomped on them over fierce protection of my child and my own dignity. That she’s managed to do anything less than that is truly a credit to her amazing character and strength. God bless her.