On the 9th June 2011 our beautiful 15 year old son Josh Fell went out to play football with his friends on the local school field. That was the last time we saw him alive.
He passed away from SADS on the school field after feeling tired and dizzy after playing football. He had only been 15 for 5 weeks.
Josh had gone out as normal to play football with his friends on the 9th June. After spending some time on his PS3, he had a phone call asking him to go out to play football.
I remember he came down stairs and asked me for some money to go to the shop; I gave him some money, ruffled his hair and told him to get a haircut as it was getting long. He laughed at me with his friend; and that was the last time I got to see my son alive.
The boys went to the school field where they played football every night – somewhere safe to play. It had got to 10pm and was just starting to get dark when I said to my husband, “Josh should be in by now, something’s wrong”.
We both went out to look for him; my husband went to Josh’s friend’s house to see if he was there. He spoke to Jacob’s mum and she rang Jacob who answered his phone in a panic. She told him to calm down and he eventually managed to say that Josh was in an ambulance and that he’d had some kind of arrest.
Richard ran to the school field to see what was happening while I ran back to get the car to drive round to the school. When I got there I was met by the ambulance ready to leave with my son and husband on board.
Jacob’s mum drove to the school and she offered to drive me to the hospital 20 miles away as I was in no fit state to drive myself. I took my car back home and we went straight to the hospital in Hull. It was during the journey that I found out from Jacob that Josh had been playing football; they were all ready to come home when Josh complained of feeling dizzy and tired so he sat down and then laid down while his friends carried on playing football. This was nothing unusual as they often played football for hours and all laid down if tired.
Jacob and James decided that they better head home as it was getting late, but when they went to Josh they realised that something was seriously wrong, as he had gone blue. Jacob started CPR and showed James what to do while he called an ambulance and went to meet them.
The boys performed CPR on Josh until the paramedics came. What amazing 14 year old boys, fighting to save their friend’s life, such brave boys to do that for their friend.
On the way to hospital it still didn’t sink in that something serious had happened even with Jacob in the back talking me through it. We expected Josh to be sat up talking when we got to hospital as you would because the paramedics had got to him so we thought he would be OK.
When I reached hospital I was met by a nurse waiting outside, she grabbed my arm and led me through A&E to the children’s A&E. It was there that my husband Richard came walking out; it was then I knew we had lost our beautiful son Josh. Our world ended that night, how could such a fit boy die at such a young age? It was so unfair.
I went in to see Josh and he looked peaceful, but I kept expecting him to wake up. We stayed with him for a while but then left him at the hospital to travel the 20 miles home back to Hornsea, a small seaside town. We left Josh’s sister, Jasmine, in bed as it was early hours when we got back from hospital. We woke her up in the morning to tell her – we had to tell his 9 year old sister that she had lost her big brother, the person she looked up to. That was the worst thing we have ever done.
Josh was such a selfless, happy, fun-loving, loveable lad who loved life and football, his family and friends. Josh’s biggest love was our local football team Hull City. Josh would go to every home game and some away games; he had supported the team for years. Josh had a motto and always said “Hull City Til I Die” which unfortunately came true all too soon. When Josh wasn’t at football he would either be out playing it, or on his PS3 playing it with his friends, or on Facebook.
Josh was a popular lad and had a lot of friends. The next day I had to ring the school and inform them of what had happened. That day affected many as they had lost a special friend. His friends were hit hard when Josh died. One of them set up an RIP page on Facebook where we have had thousands of comforting comments which have helped us to know how well loved our son was and how much he was going to be missed.
We had to wait nearly 4 weeks to finally lay Josh to rest as his heart had to be sent off to London to have further tests as the first post mortem showed nothing wrong with his heart. We had an agonising wait before we got the cause of death. They put it down to SADS. Josh’s heart was perfectly healthy, he was a fit and healthy lad.
This is what we struggle with – the fact that a healthy boy could be taken away from us when he had nothing wrong with him. Even now, 12 weeks on, we are still trying to comprehend WHY!!! Life is so cruel.
We had the funeral and hundreds of friends and family and people we didn’t know attended. We raised nearly £1300 at the funeral collection for CRY.
Since Josh’s death we have thrown ourselves into fundraising for CRY and set a target to raise £10,000. At 12 weeks on, when we get all of the money collected in we will have raised nearly £8,000 through various fundraising events. Our aim is to get as many young people tested as we can and we have booked our dates for next year for the CRY cardiac screening unit to come to Hornsea.
We miss Josh so much but we will keep his memory alive by raising as much money for CRY as we can. Life will never be the same but we have to keep going for our daughter Jasmine, as she also may have something wrong with her heart so she is being monitored closely at the moment.
Josh was so happy – he was loved and is missed by so many people. We have had massive support from his friends, family and Facebook; they have all been a big comfort to us.
We miss him so much; life will never be the same. There will always be a big part of me missing as Josh was such a massive part of our lives.
Donna Fell
