10th December 2012 – a day that will stay with me and my family forever…
16 years earlier I had been blessed at 35 with a lovely son, brother to Louise and Leanne, aged 15 and 13. A bit of a surprise, but he brought so much joy to our lives.
On the Sunday we all went up to my husband’s parents for Granddad’s birthday. It was a lovely pleasant afternoon where we were all together, laughing and joking, not knowing what horror would come to our door the next day.
That terrible Monday morning, I went into Danny’s room and looked at him sleeping in bed. I closed his window and left him sleeping as it was his day off college. I left him a list of jobs to do and left for work.
I rang him throughout the morning but couldn’t get an answer. I wasn’t too concerned at first – he was probably playing on his Xbox with his headphones on – but as time went on I got a strange sense of foreboding.
I sent my youngest daughter, Leanne, to go and check on him. Then I got the call that made my whole world crash around me. She could see Daniel was lying on the floor in the lounge.
I drove home like the devil himself was after me, but I knew somehow what I was going to find. I ran screaming into the house, although the police and paramedics tried to stop me.
My precious, handsome, wonderful young man was gone.
He was cold, but looked peaceful – in fact he looked asleep. The coroner said it was some sort of seizure, his heart just stopped beating and he wouldn’t have felt pain or fear.
It still doesn’t feel real. 15 months on I still cry every day for my only son. I miss his presence, his laugh, his mess, his voice, everything – it is just not fair. It is cruel that he will not get the rest of his life to do the things a young man should be doing.
A parent losing a child is the wrong way round, it leaves you feeling so empty…
It is still so so hard to believe, I never thought I would be visiting my son in a crematorium, you just don’t think anything like this could happen to you. Our lives are simply not the same…
Lorraine Nicholls
