Running with heart

Posted on 13 September, 2018

In July 2016, my husband, Jeff, watched our then five-year-old son as he put together a jigsaw puzzle depicting famous museum artefacts.

Jeff said, ‘When you’re older, we’ll take you to all of Daddy’s favourite museums around the world’. They had a good-night cuddle and warm milk on the couch, then Jeff tucked Sebastian into bed and said, ‘Night night, matey’.

Those were his final words.

Jeff died, without any warning, from undiagnosed ischaemic heart disease. I was told by a nurse that he had the kind of sudden, fatal heart attack that gives rise to the phrase ‘drop dead’.

His loss was shocking and profound. It ricocheted out of our family home, into his workplace and across the world. The devastation caused by his sudden absence was immediate. It was breathtakingly final. Its effects will be felt by us in endlessly unfolding ways for as long as we live.

There was no time for goodbye. Not even a parting glance. Just interminable silence.

Two years on, I write this from the new house I’ve built in another suburb, where we feel very content. We couldn’t stay where he died any more. We couldn’t breathe there.

With every step we take up a game-board ladder as a fractured family, we are perilously close to landing on a snake. It’s often the smallest things that send us tumbling back to what feels like ‘square one’ of our grief. It isn’t square one because nothing could be that awful. Over two years, and with much support and counselling, we’ve all come a long way. We’re each stronger than we’ve ever been, but beneath that strength, there will always be stress fractures. There’ll be a part in each of us that is forever vulnerable to the grip of grief.

In one of his last conversations with his father, Jeff was reminded to have an angiogram. Heart disease — specifically early death in the male line — runs in the family. He was regularly monitored for his high blood pressure and said having the angiogram was ‘on his list’.

It was on the list, along with a heap of seemingly more pressing commitments that jostled above his heart health until his heart health took a stand. It declared its hand. It won.

‘It won’t happen to me’. That’s what we all think, until something happens to us and we fall onto the wrong side of a statistic. With heart health, the risk couldn’t be more obvious if it was lit up in neon. One in three Australians will die from heart disease. One in three.

I’ll be walking the Canberra Times Fun Run on 23 September in memory of Jeff, and write this article for the Heart Foundation to raise awareness of the insidious nature of heart disease. I know of several people in my own circle whose lives have been saved just through hearing Jeff’s story and taking action. I hope that readers of this article will pick up the phone right now and make an appointment with the GP for a full heart check.

Emma and her son.

It’s so simple. Every other item on your To Do list is less important than this one. There’s no less blunt way for me to urge you not to leave this until your heart prioritises your list for you and leaves your family shattered in the wake of your loss.

This year, the Canberra Times Fun Run will be fundraising for The Heart Foundation. A fun community event with 1K, 5K and 10K options taking place on Sunday 23 September, it’s the perfect way to fundraise for a great cause, raise awareness of the important work the Foundation does and get active with friends and family. 

Registration (including family packages) and fundraising information is available until 22 September at canberratimesfunrun.com.au as well as course and fundraising information.