As I climbed back into my car, I just sat there.
Still. Silent.
It felt like the world had stopped.
The last hour had been one of the hardest of my life telling the kids their dad was dead. I looked them each in the eye and told them we were going to get through this together.
They had so many questions.
Some I could answer. Some I couldn’t.
But I promised them this:
We’d always be honest. We’d always be open.
We’d walk through this grief as a family, side by side, and that I had got them.
But it wasn’t over yet.
There were still two people I had to call my sister Jane, their mum… and our mum.
The kids had lived with their dad full-time for the last seven years. After Jane developed the serious health condition Encephalitis during her second pregnancy, she made the difficult decision to ask their dad to take them full time after years of trying to get the help and support.
And now I had to call her and say the unimaginable.
Only… I couldn’t even start there.
First, I rang my mum.
She was away, hours away, and I knew I had to be calm.
“Mum, I need you to sit down,” I said. My voice steady, even though my chest was pounding.
She knew. Before I even said it.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
When she said she was sitting, I took a deep breath and told her:
“Peter’s dead.”
Silence. Then panic. She started to say no, no, no.
I explained as gently as I could that he’d been found at the wheel of his car, that they’d tried to save him, that it had been too late.
And then I told her I’d already told the children. That they were safe. That we were going to get through this, together.
In true mum fashion, she went straight into action.
She said she was transferring some money just so we wouldn’t have to worry for now. It was her way of doing something when she couldn’t physically be here.
And as I hung up, I knew the next call to Jane would be even harder.