On 9th August 2020 my husband, my two children and I had been at the beach for the day. We had just returned from a 2-week camping road trip to visit family after the first COVID-19 lockdown had lifted and it was the last day of our holiday. My husband and son had been surfing and my husband complained of indigestion, so we decided to pack up and go home. Driving home he said he felt sick but we had no idea how serious his symptoms were until it was too late.
He went upstairs to have a shower and a lie-down whilst I chatted to a neighbour, unpacked the van from the day at the beach and spent time with the children in the garden. When I went upstairs to see how he was it was too late, I found him already gone, I’ll never forget the sight of him, I frantically called an ambulance who advised me to pull him off the bed and do CPR which I did until the paramedics took over, shortly after they arrived they told me he was gone and my world fell apart.
Dan and I had been together for 17 years, married for 13. He was my world, my future, my best friend, my soulmate. At that moment on that day all that was torn away from us, from me and from my children.
I have found myself in a club that no one wants to join, being widowed and young is something I had never considered would have happened to us…he had just turned 36 a month before he died, loved going on bike rides and surfing, he worked as a nurse and had no health complaints. A post mortem showed he died of premature coronary artery disease, a silent disease that meant he had no symptoms until it caused a heart attack that day.
Dan touched so many people’s lives and there is a Dan shaped hole in our lives now that can never be filled.
