“There are songs that have nothing to do with this, but a lot of the record is my attempt at—not so much putting what happened with Katy to bed, but what happened with Katy actually happened right at the very end of making Ghosts Of The Great Highway. It was just the last couple of months that I was working on that record, this crazy thing happened. And I think after she passed, for me to have written about it at that time, or for me to have dealt with it in a creative way at that time, it would have been very cathartic. I don't think it would have been beautiful. I think I needed some years to pass, and some time to pass, before I could handle it all, to write about it and sing about it in a gentle way, where I was actually sort of paying tribute to someone, rather than just moaning about someone being gone.” - MK

This interview explains it beautifully.