AT the Dulong lookout is a love lock bigger than all the other padlocks for a love that lasts beyond this world.
Brett Wills cannot hear Anna Ward’s voice or touch her face anymore but his love for her is as strong as ever.
Anna, 33, collapsed and died suddenly at home in Nambour in April 2016, the victim of a rare heart condition that was only discovered during an autopsy.
Mr Mills had held Anna in his arms and promised to care for their five children in her last moments.
After the formalities following her death were over, Mr Wills organised a special farewell at the Dulong lookout where he and family and friends fixed locks to the railings to symbolise their love for Anna.
They also let off balloons decorated with dragonflies.
“Anna had always said to the kids that if anything ever happened to her, to always look for dragonflies and that would be her,” he said.
Mr Wills described Anna as a very intelligent woman of diverse talents, including astrology and cooking, and music but was quiet about her abilities.
“I think we’d be going out for about three years and I didn’t know she could play classical music. We were at a barbecue and I was outside doing the blokey thing and could hear this music, Beethoven, or something.
“Someone said it was Anna playing and I thought, “My Anna?” and I went in and she’s at the piano.”
The couple had been engaged to marry but never got around to it while growing their family.
Prior to Anna’s death, they had already been dealt a blow when a brain aneurism left Mr Wills unable to work.
Counselling, the kindness of people Mr Wills had never met before, and keeping busy has helped get the family through.
Mr Wills and makes a point of celebrating Anna on her birthday and on the anniversary of her death with their children, who are now between nine and 16 years old.
He has a tattoo of a dragonfly embedded with some of her ashes in her memory and the kids will each get the same dragonfly tattoo when they come of age. When the youngest has been inked, they will scatter Anna’s ashes at the Maleny property where she grew up.
Friends send Mr Wills pictures of dragonflies to remember Anna but the family always feel close to her when they go to Dulong lookout.
“We see heaps of dragonflies,” Mr Wills said.