Would go on living..

Hi, ( I already wrote the same thread but it disappeared I don't know why..)

I don't understand the sentences in parenthesis , is he talking about a habit in the past ? or is he talking about the future ( from the moment he's telling us ) that he will go on living like that and be able to go on living but he's not sur because he's not with her anymore.

''And so I had to try to answer her again exactly what she had asked. And once she lay over against me late at night, and she started talking, her breath in my ear, and she just went on and on and talked faster and faster. She couldn't stop. And I loved it. I just felt that all that life in her was running into me too. I had so little life in me. Her life, her fire was coming into me in that hot breath in my ear. And I just wanted her to go on talking forever right there next to me.

(And I would go on living like that. I would be able to go on living but without her. I don't know.) Then you forget some of it all, maybe most of it all, almost all of it in the end. And you work hard at remembering everything now so you won't ever forget. But you can kill it too, even by thinking about it too much, though you can't help but thinking about it nearly all the time.''

Source : it's from a book , but i heard it on the radio.

Thanks.