A mum-of-four told her husband, “I love you” before drifting off to sleep and never waking up, in what’s now being called a tragic accident. Deanne Clarke, 41, was described by her family as a devoted mother who “adored her kids” and pushed through life with strength she didn’t even realise she had.
Her husband, Allan Clarke, recalled the heartbreaking night at their home in Wallasey, just hours before she was found unresponsive in bed. “I said ‘I love you’, she said ‘I love you too’, and then she laid down,” he said. “Within minutes, she had gone into a really deep sleep. It sounded like she was snoring slightly, and I thought if I moved her pillow it would clear her airway. I moved her pillow, and her head felt quite heavy… That night she was lying quite comfortably and peacefully.”
The next morning, Allan left early to take one of their children to school. When he got back just before 9 am, he initially thought Deanne was still asleep. “It wasn’t until the schools were closed and I came to tell her, I looked at her and I knew,” he said, reported the Liverpool Echo.
An inquest into her death, held this week at Gerard Majella Courthouse in Kirkdale, revealed Deanne had died from an accidental overdose of painkillers. She had been living with fibromyalgia, a chronic illness that left her in constant pain, struggling with extreme fatigue and severe sleep issues. Her husband said the pain had become “unbearable” in the weeks before her death.
Deanne, who worked as a social care manager, had seen her GP the day before she died, suffering from a chest infection and ongoing pain that made even putting on a T-shirt excruciating. A post-mortem found fatally high levels of prescription painkillers in her system, though it wasn’t clear when or how she had taken them. Her husband described her as always “very meticulous” with her medication.
Coroner Joe Hart concluded that there was no evidence Deanne had taken the medication deliberately and said her death was likely a tragic accident. “This is a lady who was very much integrated with her family, very much making plans for the future,” he said. “However careful Deanne had been in the past, it’s impossible to know what the impact of days, weeks, and months of poor sleep, pai,n and poor vision can do.”
He recorded a narrative verdict, saying Deanne died from an excessive dose of prescribed painkillers, with pneumonia as a complicating factor.
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