I bade him goodbye that
morning as he rushed out the door at the last minute as per usual, running
to catch his bus. Unbeknownst to ourselves this
was the last time we would see our son alive - we received a phone call from
his work mid-morning to say he had collapsed at work and could we make our
way to the hospital.
When
we arrived at A&E we were ushered into a side room, given no information and
asked to wait. After what seemed like an eternity a doctor and two nurses
entered the room and I knew by their faces Robert was gone.
Everything became a blur, we spent time with him at the
hospital and the hardest thing in our life was to leave him behind at the
hospital knowing he was never coming home with us again.
The post mortem revealed that the cause of his death was
Sudden Adult Death Syndrome. Robert had never showed any signs or symptoms
in the days leading up to his death and had been fit and healthy throughout
his life.
I need not describe how difficult this past year has been
without our son and I see by the many stories posted on the CRY website
that there are many families like ourselves going through the same thing.
I don't know how we
would have managed without the support of our close family and friends -
including Robert's friends - this 1st year
without him. We miss him dreadfully and will always struggle to come to
terms with his passing. It helps to speak about Robert often and the
20 years of wonderful memories we have of him.
Robert would have been celebrating his
21st this year; thus,
to mark this occasion we decided to do a 95 mile sponsored walk to raise
money for CRY in his memory. Hopefully this will be the 1st of
many fundraisers that will help raise money for CRY and raise awareness of
Sudden Adult Death Syndrome.
http://www.justgiving.com/lesleyokane
