A mother who lost her teenage son has spoken of the renewed grief she faces every year on Mother's Day. Sharon Jenkins' son David died just weeks before Christmas in 2019.
Sharon said she struggles every year with the emotions Mother's Day forces her to confront. Her first Mother's Day without Cardiff City fan David, who was 19 when he died, was full of "raw grief". It still hurts now, three years later.
She said: "He would be 23 this year. I see his friends getting engaged and having babies. And I wonder if he was still alive what would he be doing with his life."
She remembers celebrating the occasion in happier times: "As a mother and a daughter, it was a time for appreciating the mother who raised me and spending time with my children, where they chose their own card or made one to tell me they loved me," she said.
"I wanted him to be there to tell me he loved me just one more time," said Sharon about that first Mother's Day. "But at the same time, my other son wanted to buy me a card and a present as to him, I am still his mum. He chose to put both of their names on the card that year - and of course the dog - and I spent the day crying and laughing and feeling guilty for both. Guilt that I was crying for one son while spending time with the other and guilt that I was laughing with one son while the other was dead."
A retail apprentice at Bait Shack in Merthyr, David had been a healthy 17-year-old when he collapsed in the middle of the night after waking to get a drink. The Penydarren football player and coach was rushed to Prince Charles Hospital. Within hours he was on a life support machine: "By 6am he was in the resuscitation room and by 8am they said his heart was barely working and his kidney and liver started to fail," Sharon said at the time. “By 9am he was in ICU – by then they managed to stabilise him and started dialysis. They said he only had a 5% chance of survival as he was in 95% cardiac failure."
As his kidney and liver also began to fail, David was transferred to a specialist London heart and lung centre the Royal Brompton Hospital. Sharon - who works as a bereavement counsellor for Marie Curie - remembers the uncertainty as doctors rushed to stabilise her son: "They told us they didn't think he was going to make it," she said. "We had no idea what was going on."
David had suffered a heart attack at age 17, an undiagnosed heart condition from birth cardiomyopathy and needed a heart transplant. During his wait he contracted sepsis twice and pneumonia which weakened his lungs and reduced his chances of surviving transplant. Then three months before he died, his aortic valve began leaking. David underwent emergency repair surgery which was successful but he suffered internal bleeding then multiple bleeds on the brain and his life support had to be switched off. He survived 20 months and two weeks from heart attack to death.
Aged 18 he was told the artificial heart keeping him alive would only last for three years. "We knew it was a terminal diagnosis," said Sharon. "David said: 'I'm 18 now and in three years time I'll be 21. So we'll have a big celebration for my 21st and you can all say goodbye and it can be my wake too'." David planned his own funeral arrangements and rang six of his friends asking if they would carry his coffin.
Some days he accepted his diagnosis, other days he'd talk about a future after he'd had a heart transplant. Sharon could only support her son as best she could and she knew when the time was right to agree for his life support to be switched off. He'd sometimes ask her: "Why did you save me, why didn't you let me die?" Sharon said she replied that she was happy to have one more day to give her son a cuddle.
After David died Sharon said the support available was lacking, in part because his death was registered in England and she lived in Wales. "I would've liked somebody to have given us a ring and ask how we were doing," Sharon said. It's standard practice for Marie Curie to send out a letter to the bereaved within six weeks and signpost the help that's available, including bereavement counselling.
"After that first Mother’s Day, my son stopped putting his brother’s name on the card," Sharon continued. "It is just him and the dog now and I find that I am okay with that. It doesn’t mean that I don’t miss him anymore or that I don’t feel sad but I also know that my youngest son wants to do the Mother’s Day things and to celebrate me. He says he loves that I am brave and strong and that through everything, I never let him down.
"I certainly feel that I let him down, on many occasions, and even that I let his brother down by letting him die. I felt for a long time that I was a bad mother. This is something that I notice is very common. A child dying - no matter what age they are - is not the way it should be. We expect to lose grandparents, then eventually parents, but our children? Never."
Sharon spent seven years working in NHS primary care mental health support services but after David died she found the return to work too sudden and with little support. When she saw the Marie Curie job come up she took it. .
"If I had not had this experience, I wonder if I would be doing what I do with Marie Curie," Sharon said. "Initially I was not able to do any bereavement work, but now as time has passed, I feel my passion for bereavement support has returned. And my own personal understanding of the lack of support available means I have a first-hand experience of what it is like to be bereaved."
Getting help was a "real struggle" for Sharon and her family - including her other son Ben, who was 17 when David died - and her work at Marie Curie is an "opportunity to make a difference". She added: "Nearly everyone I speak to says they didn't know where to turn to for help."
"For me, life has to go on and some days are harder than others to get out of bed," she continued. "Some days the littlest thing can make me cry. Not a day goes by that I don’t grieve or feel a moment of sadness, but I am also able to remember the happy memories and the things we did that were important and I hope in a small way that I make him proud."
When she remembers her son, she thinks back to "all the daft things he did". She said: "I worry that once I die, that his memory will die too, then I think of all of the lives he touched and the friendships he had, and I am proud. It feels a healthier way to live between the grief and the new life I am living. The pain of grief is with me, but it has got easier to manage and I know that he would want me to live, not just exist, and of course I need to still be mum to my other son and to give him a fulfilled life, supporting his opportunities in the same way I would if his brother was here.
"It is such a relief that many companies now send an email asking if you want to opt out of Mother’s Day cards and most days. Of course I do but I have to remember that for the time being I am also a daughter so I need to get a card for my mother. Online ordering and delivering being the way that works for me for now."
If you need support with bereavement or grief, call the Marie Curie support line on 0800 090 2309 or visit www.mariecurie.org.uk/support
You can join the National Day of Reflection, a day to take a moment to remember loved ones, support those grieving, and connect with each other on March 23. Register your interest at www.mariecurie.org.uk/dayofreflection
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