How my grief HELPS OTHERS

When Karen Sutton lost her husband Simon unexpectedly, she realised she wasn’t the only one enduring pain

- SARAH WHITELEY

I’ll always remember my and Simon’s 13th anniversary. It was late August 2016 and we’d just come back from a three-week holiday in France. We’d taken our caravan to a campsite we’d been to for a few years running, and our girls, Sydney, then nine, and Ella, five, had the time of their lives, cycling with friends and having their first taste of independence.

I had once bought Simon a sign, saying, ‘Grow old with me, the best is yet to come,’ and, after the sleepless, stressful baby years, it felt like we were getting closer to that. Life was getting easier, we agreed.

‘Thirteen years – unlucky for some but not for us,’ I wrote on Facebook to celebrate. How wrong I was…

Because just a couple of weeks later, on 11 September, Simon, 43, set off early to meet his friend Mark for their weekly bike ride. Still in bed, I heard him make the girls a hot chocolate, then tell them we’d do something nice when he got back.

But at 11.30am, it was Mark, not Simon, who turned up at our door in Cheltenham, his eyes wide, his hands over his mouth. Somehow, I just knew. Simon had died. He explained, stammering, that Simon had suffered a heart attack and the paramedics couldn’t do anything to save him.

I could barely believe it. Simon was the most alive person I knew.

Ever since we’d met in 1998, I’d been attracted to his drive and confidence. And he was so quick-witted, he had me in stitches. At 5ft 5in, I’d initially dismissed him romantically, but then we’d had a drunken dalliance at my sister’s wedding in 2003.