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The Laura Dowling Experience
From Devastating Loss to Renewed Purpose: Sinéad Hingston's Grief Journey
Sinéad Hingston-Green shares her heartbreaking journey of losing her husband Jeff while 19 weeks pregnant and how she rebuilt her life through grief, motherhood, and eventually finding love again. Her powerful story illustrates how we can honor those we've lost while still embracing new beginnings and finding purpose in our pain.
• Sinead's husband Jeff died suddenly during a boat trip in Portugal when she was 19 weeks pregnant
• The traumatic experience of witnessing his medical emergency and the aftermath of being kept away from him
• Challenges of bringing Jeff's body home to Ireland and navigating funeral arrangements while pregnant
• Birth complications resulting in severe physical trauma alongside the emotional trauma of grief
• Finding love again with Michael ("Green") two years after Jeff's death
• Balancing honoring Jeff's memory while building a new life and blended family
• Multiple pregnancy losses before having their third child, which led to creating the "Spark a Life" initiative
• The importance of finding the right grief counsellor and support system
• How Ireland's culture handles funerals well but struggles with long-term grief support
• Advice on trusting that your power is in your reaction to life's challenges
Join Sinead on the Camino walk this September with Good Grief, her initiative to help others through grief by creating community and understanding.
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
We had a week together in Portugal. We had arranged to go on one of those organized boat trips along the Algarve coast. Jeff swam around for about five and a half minutes, so the whole time. I'm taking photos of him in the waters, and that's when I realized that there was something wrong with him. So he was lying on his back staring at the sky, his mouth was open and his left hand was like flicking like a fish out of water. He wasn't moving. He wasn't moving. He wasn't answering. I mean, this probably all happened in about 30 seconds, but it felt like about 10 hours. The captain had then jumped in and they dragged Jeff up onto the dinghy. They just went to Albufeira and left us on this main boat. The captain kept telling me to calm down and kept saying you need to think of all the other people on this trip, like they've all paid to be here.
Speaker 2:What, what.
Speaker 1:So we were an hour and 40 minutes on this fucking boat in the middle of the ocean and I was going. Where is my husband? I want to go to Jeff, just tell me, is he okay? You're still stunned, completely shocked, and I was like, oh, I'm going to go. I'm actually going to faint. I'll never forget that feeling, the feeling of never being able to touch his hand or giving him a kiss, ever again.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to the Lower Downing Experience podcast, where each week, I bring you insightful and inspiring guests that will open your mind and empower your life. Today, I'm joined by Sinead Hinkston-Green, who shares the heartbreaking story of losing her first husband while 19 weeks pregnant. She opens up about navigating grief, the challenges of giving birth under such difficult circumstances, and how she continues to honour his memory while embracing life with her new husband and their children. We also explore how in Ireland, we handle funerals well, but we often struggle with grief itself, and why learning to grieve properly is so important for healing and moving forward. Before we get into today's episode, I would love to ask you for a little favour. If you like this podcast and I know so many of you do you could really help me out by giving it a nice rating, sharing it with your friends and subscribing to the podcast. It may not seem like a big deal, but actually this really helps to keep the podcast high up in the charts, and that means that I can keep bringing you brilliant guests who are insightful, inspiring and full of wisdom that we can all learn from. Thanks a million.
Speaker 2:Now let's get to it. Yes, it's me, the fabulous pharmacist, the woman who poured her whole heart into formulating the multi-award winning supplement known to you all as Fabu Shrooms Menon Perry. I want to improve the lives of Perry and menopausal women across the world. But don't just think of Shrooms Menon Perry as just another supplement. Consider this your special treat for you alone.
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Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2:I had to stop you talking before I introduced you because we were just going off on a massive tangent. I was like I'm going to forget what part of this was before we started or after we started. We're going to end up going around in circles.
Speaker 1:Wouldn't be like me to start talking. Well, I think.
Speaker 2:I can just sit back and let you talk because. I don't think I'm going to have very much to do in this, like sitting in the car going.
Speaker 1:You're fine, you'll be fine. Yeah, I am.
Speaker 2:So tell me why you're here. You've an interesting story, sinead, and I think that the whole area of grief is so vital to open up. I actually was speaking to someone who is a death doula and runs a death cafe.
Speaker 1:Wow, For people that want, isn't it?
Speaker 2:a go away. I don't know where it is, but people that want to plan their own deaths and plan their own death parties, maybe, or when they're you know, wow, and yes, it's very popular. I'm going to get her on, but anyway, that's the other side of it.
Speaker 1:I will. That would be an incredible conversation Because. Funerals.
Speaker 2:Funerals very well. We don't do grief very well, sure, we don't, no.
Speaker 1:So obviously I never even realized that until it knocked on my own front door. So look, I'm 14 years into this grief journey that I've been on. When I was 30, we Jeff and I, my then hubby got married December 2010. I always call it the year of the bad snow because it was like the worst dump of snow we'd had in years in Ireland and we were due to get married on the 27th of December. Jeff worked for Sky Sports and it was the only day there was no football on, so all his friends could come, so got married here.
Speaker 1:We lived in the UK at the time, got married here and while we were on, we went to the Maldives on our honeymoon in the January and his mom died suddenly and it was the first kind of part from my granddad dying when I was like 12, the first real hit of grief that I had felt. But it wasn't even my own. Do you know what I mean? I was grieving the loss of my lovely, gorgeous new mother-in-law, but to see Jeff struggle so much and go through this horrific time, losing his mom at 36 years old, and it was just really sad. So we came home from honeymoon and we said goodbye to Emerald.
Speaker 1:And then the day of her funeral, we were standing at the grave and Jeff just went oh, mom, you know what? We're going to start trying for a baby. And I burst out laughing. I was like, okay, yeah, okay, we are. And we talked about it on honeymoon. It was very much like here look, let's just enjoy the next couple of years of being married. Let's go travel, let's do whatever, and we'll worry about that in a couple of years yeah and then he just blurted this out at the grave.
Speaker 1:So I literally stopped taking the pill that day. No joke, I was like, or the day after, and we got pregnant pretty quick. We were pregnant by the April and fast movers, oh yeah, pretty fertile, I have to say. But we, very stupidly let it be a lesson to everybody we didn't have worldwide travel insurance. When we went to the Maltese we didn't even check our travel insurance, so we had to pay for our flights home, which were pretty punchy from Mali.
Speaker 1:So, dad, then we weren't going away during the summer and dad was like, look, you need a break, like Jeff is working his ass off. And dad was like, come over to us in Portugal. He was in his mate's villa in Portugal and Jeff and I were like, do you know what feck it? Actually we might come over, but then we asked Jeff's dad to join us as well. So we flew over from East Midlands and his dad flew over from Dublin. We met in Faro. We had a week together inlands, and his dad flew over from Dublin. We met in Faro. We had a week together in Portugal, and then the parents were all leaving on the Sunday and we were staying on for an extra week on our own, which we were absolutely living for. It was absolutely glorious over there.
Speaker 1:And the Sunday we were due to leave we had arranged to go on one of those like organized boat trips along the Algarve coast. So we were staying in Villamora, got the boat from there myself, mum Ken and Jeff went on the boat. My dad's not into that kind of stuff at all, so he stayed back reading his books. And when we got on the boat the captain was like is there anybody on this boat pregnant? And I was like, oh well, I'm pregnant, but I've been on ferries and boats like get seasick. And he just said the last pregnant woman I had in this boat ended up in Faroe Hospital with contractions. And I was like well, I'm only like 19 weeks.
Speaker 2:I was like I'm really hoping that's not gonna happen today.
Speaker 1:But with that, like as we were leaving the marina, I started to have a panic attack and I don't know whether I don't know why, right. So I like when I moved to London, first I had really bad panic attacks and they used to always happen in the trains like really, really bad, and then they kind of eased off, like I'd never lived away from home. So I just put it down to the hugeness of moving to London. But as I got used to London and life there, I was fine. I hadn't had one in ages. And then I had a random one in the airport on the way over to Portugal and then the next one I had was on this boat. So we're now out in the ocean and I'm like I don't feel well. So the little toilet on the boat became my go-to. I just was like just sick. I had diarrhea, I was vomiting, I just did not feel well, were you shallow breathing.
Speaker 1:Were you having a? Oh yeah, no, I just felt that awful, like yeah, like my full-on hand singly white dots, like full on panic attack, and Jeff obviously initially was looking after me loads and getting me to eat bits of fruit and whatever, and then started taking the piss out of me because he was, like, of all people, like to have this on a boat. When we're stuck on a boat, come on.
Speaker 2:You have to know come on.
Speaker 1:So there's loads of photos of us like messing on the boat, but me lying on the couch underneath down the bottom of the boat like a miserable bitch, because I was just like I'm hating this. Anyway, the boat anchored and the first set of people were going in on this dinghy to see the caves, and then they were doing it in two blocks because they could only take whatever 16 people on the dinghy and we were due to go in the second dinghy and the captain said anyone that wants to jump in for a swim while we're waiting, go ahead. And I had kind of started to feel a bit better. A swim while we're waiting, go ahead. And I had kind of started to feel a bit better. So I was like number one, I'm not swimming. Second, I'm not going on the dinghy, I think I'm just going to stay in the main boat yeah, so this is all over and we can just go home and bring them to the airport and continue on our life.
Speaker 1:So initially Jeff wasn't going to jump in for a swim and he was such a water baby like he absolutely loved the water. So I was like why wouldn't you? May as well? Like you're in Portugal, like look where we are, it's absolutely stunning. And we were right besides San Rafael Beach, so you could see this beautiful beach, see the caves. It was absolutely stunning. So eventually he was like you know what? Actually I will regret it if I don't jump in so in he gets and there's two men and a younger girl in the water. Already they already they were swimming around. They had gotten or jumped off the boat first and Jeff swam around for I think it's about five and a half minutes, so the whole time I'm taking photos of him in the water. So we bought each other a really nice camera as a wedding present to each other.
Speaker 1:I loved taking photos. He loved seeing me take photos and I'm snapping away in the camera, trying to get used to this like high speed bursts that I, my new friend Joy, and he's absolutely fine and he's like hands up going. Oh, you know, look at the sunshine. This is gorgeous, it's glorious. And there's like a 40 second gap in the photos and something happened with the man and the daughter that she I think she grabbed onto his neck or something, and mom and I, being women, were like, oh, that was so dangerous, and you know, he let out a roar.
Speaker 1:She and I, being women, were like, oh, that was so dangerous. And you know, he let out a roar. She started crying and we were like, oh, do we need to get her out of the water? And then I turned the camera back to Jeff and started taking photos again and that's when I realized that there was something wrong with him and I was like, why is he so still, all of a sudden. So he was lying on his back staring at the sky, his mouth was open as if he was struggling to breathe, and his left hand was like flicking like a fish out of water, like just flicking like loads, and he was just like a starfish lying on his back, like kind of frozen. And I just said to mom I said, mom, there's something wrong with Jeff. And she went, no, no, he don't like. So we used to joke in the pool he'd float and he'd just lie there and he'd close his eyes and he'd float around the pool.
Speaker 1:And I could never do it and I always just joke on my arse, it's too heavy. It just weighed me down like I could never, ever, and I still can't to this day, I cannot float in a pool. And I mum said that's all he was doing, that she was like oh, he does in the pool, he was doing it yesterday, he's fine, like, but I just I just knew he wasn't fine, so I started shouting at him and I don't. I still, to this day, don't know why I didn't jump in. I can swim very well like I don't know why I didn't jump in. I can swim very well Like I don't know what stopped me from jumping in the water. But he wasn't moving, he wasn't answering.
Speaker 1:I then started shouting at the two men in the water to go over to get him. I was like can you go to my husband? They didn't understand what I was trying to say. I then started shouting and screaming at the captain to jump in. This probably all happened in about 30 seconds, but it felt like about 10 hours. And then, when I looked over, he had gone limp, his two legs had gone down, his face had gone down into the water. So I started screaming at people and the guy eventually swam over to him and he just poked him in the shoulder and looked at me as if to say, like what do you want me to do here? I'm like like, lift his head out of the water Like he. He's drowning like lifting out of the water.
Speaker 1:so with that, the dinghy comes out of the caves. Now I don't know whether the captain had radioed them to come out, but this is all unfolding at the same time. The captain had then jumped in, obviously realizing that there was something up, and they dragged jeff up onto the dinghy, with all of these poor people sitting on the dinghy, and they just dragged him into the middle of it and they wouldn't let Ken, mom or I onto the dinghy. They were like they just left, like they just went to Albufeira and left us on this main boat. So we sat there for way too long, that's all I can say. The captain kept telling me to calm down and kept saying like you need to think of all the other people on this trip, like they, like you need to think of all the other people on this trip like they've all paid to be here.
Speaker 1:I'm like nobody wants to be here now nobody would mind if you brought me back to the shore to be with my husband and I was like I don't even know if he's okay. I said you need to bring me back and he just wouldn't. He just wouldn't bring me back. I'll never forget the frustration and I said to mum I'm going to swim to the beach now. We could have been two kilometers away from that beach for all I know.
Speaker 1:But I could see the beach. I was like I'm going to swim to the beach and I'm going to get help and I had rang 999. I had then rang my dad to try and get my dad to go to Albufeira to meet Jeff off the dinghy to make sure he was okay. Couldn't get through to dad, so I ended up bringing my brother in Dublin to ring the reception in the apartment, the villas that we were staying in, to get the security guards to go to the villa, to get that like. It was. Just, you just go into this mode of like. We need to figure out what we do here. So we were an hour and 40 minutes on this fucking boat in the middle of the ocean and the captain wouldn't bring us back. And what would all the other people do? They were all crying all the time, like I was just why wouldn't he bring you back?
Speaker 2:What was the reason? He just?
Speaker 1:wouldn't lift the anchor he just said, he just wouldn't. I honestly don't know and I'd love to meet him now and be like why wouldn't you bring me back? Why wouldn't you give me?
Speaker 2:that last few minutes with my husband in.
Speaker 1:Next thing, the dinghy arrives back with just the driver or the guy who was on our boat and a paramedic, nobody else. And I was like where are all the people? Why haven't they brought all the people back? Because obviously they all knew that he was gone. So they got myself, ken and mom onto the dinghy. They brought us back to Albufeira and I'll never forget, I literally leaped off this dinghy onto the little it's like a ramp coming off at the marina and I ran up to the top of the ramp and there was the high-ace ambulances like not the big one, it was the little van one and the main ambulance guy met me and he just said are you his wife?
Speaker 1:And I said yeah. I said where is he? And he said oh, just come with me for a second, just sit down. That's just. You know, that's just. And I was going where is my husband? I want to go to Jeff, like nearly two hours at this stage, and I'm like just tell me, is he OK? And he started firing so many questions at me, like did he have alcohol for his breakfast? Did he hit his head when he jumped into the water Trying to cover themselves? I he feeling well, all of these questions and I'm going. Where is he?
Speaker 1:Is he okay. And then he just said we worked on him for a long time and I was like, yeah, okay, fair enough, like you know, expecting to see him hooked up to oxygen and me going you gobshite like what the?
Speaker 1:God's going on here. And he just said you know, we worked on him for a long time. I can't even remember what words he came out with, like I'm sorry, we couldn't bring him back, or whatever broken English he said to me and I was like huh. And I just remember the blood draining from the tip of my head down my body and I was like oh, I can feel my hands going now, even actually putting myself back there. I was like I'm going to go, I'm actually going to faint. So I just said I'm actually gonna faint. So I just said I'm gonna get sick. I'm gonna get sick.
Speaker 1:And the side door of the ambulance was open. So I went to get out of the ambulance and I ended up falling like head first out the side door of the ambulance. I'd say people watching were like what the fuck is going on here? Like. So I fell head first out. I ended up with like a graze in my knee, graze in my head, and when I came to I was on the stretcher hooked up to a drip. So I was like, okay, that clearly was all a total dream. I obviously got concussion and this is and Jeff's alive. And none of this happened. But all I woke up to was my mom. I'll never forget it, just wailing no, no, no, please, god, no and I just knew.
Speaker 1:I was like oh, he is gone, like he's not, he's not here anymore. And I remember saying to the guy I had this overwhelming urge to go to the loo, like bizarre. I was like I really need to go to the bathroom, like I need to pee, and he was like you don't stand or don't sit up. Don't sit up.
Speaker 1:And I said no, no, I'm actually fine now and like I'm trying to pull the thing out of my arm and I just kept thinking to myself like I just need to go to the bathroom, I just need to pee and then I can deal with all of this. But I had this overwhelming urge and he just said I can't let you go in. If you go in there, you'll see him. And I was like in where. I was like where is Jeff? I was like I just want to go sit with my husband and he looked me dead in the eye and he just says how would you feel if you lost your husband and your baby in the same day? We need to get you to hospital. You're after falling, you've hit your head, you're pregnant. And I was like I don't what, like I just want to go sit with him. I didn't even think in any of those minutes that I was pregnant, like it didn't even occur to me. Do you know what?
Speaker 1:I mean yeah, so from what I gather, he was in the marina in the building that we were sitting in front of. I was in the the ambulance. Mum was sitting in the ambulance with me. Jeff's dad was in total shock just sitting outside of the ambulance and I remember my dad arriving with passports. So the passports were handed over to the ambulance guys. The door was shut and off we went and he did say to me if you really need to pee, I can put a tube I can give you a cataract, and I was like I just need to go to the loo, like this is all very dramatic, anyway.
Speaker 1:So he wouldn't let me go see Jeff, he wouldn't let me sit with him, he wouldn't let me go near him and we I'll never forget the sirens. I've never been in an ambulance with sirens before. But we went to Faro Hospital. Sirens on flew to Faro Hospital. I had a scan Immediately. The guy was like do you know what you're having? And I said no. And he said do you want to know? Like what did I tell you? And I was like no, like no, and mum went no, don't, absolutely no, made a decision as a couple not to find like you're, not to breathe the words to her. So I had the scan, obviously, like the baby was absolutely fine, albeit the 19 week old little teeny thing, yeah. And then random, remember my hand where the IV had been started to explode like blow up. Never seen anything like before.
Speaker 1:Like, but I don't know, what my vein or what happened. But it started to swell and it swelled and swelled and swelled it. I was like sorry, is my hand about to explode? Like I need to get out of this place. But they still wouldn't tell me where Jeff was, where they were taking him to anything. They wouldn't tell me anything. They just kept saying you're pregnant, we need to look after you, we need to look after you. Then they gave me 10 milligrams of. So I remember lying in mum's lap the whole way back and as a kid mum used to like run her nails through my hair and I still am obsessed with people playing with my hair. Oh, my god, I am too. I love it. So I just remember lying on her lap in the car and just her running her fingers through my hair and feeling totally out of it, like I was totally out of it at that stage.
Speaker 1:I don't really remember much that evening. The obviously he died abroad, so we contacted the consulate and they said do you have travel insurance? And I said yeah, we do, and said you need to contact your travel insurance and they'll actually kick into gear, they'll look after everything. And I was like oh, wow, okay. So it really pissed me off because all the papers at home were like the Irish consulate is looking after the family and I'm like they didn't. They did nothing, nothing. They didn't contact us. It was all us trying to figure out what to do over there. But, to be fair, the Funeral Services International, I think they're called kicked in but they sent this poor child I'll never forget he looked about 15, to come and look after us. So he arrived that evening with like a wad of paperwork and I actually at one point remember just scribbling on this like signing stuff, didn't even know what I was signing, but it was all for the autopsy to be done to identify him by his passport, like all of this stuff. Did you get to see him? No, so they still wouldn't tell us where he was.
Speaker 1:This was the Sunday, so he died. So all of this happened at like 12 o'clock in the morning. We got back to the marina. At about two o'clock went to the hospital, came back, so that this is like five or six o'clock that evening. We're signing all these bits of paper. He couldn't even tell us where they had taken Jeff.
Speaker 1:Monday came and went like literally sitting in the villa ringing anybody going where have you taken my husband like wouldn't even tell us what hospital they had brought him to. And then the Tuesday morning I absolutely lost my shit on the phone I don't even know who I was talking to and said, oh, you know, to seven days. And I said he's not a fucking like bank transfer, he's a human and I want to go sit with my husband. Like this is now two days, you haven't told me where he is. I just remember losing my mind. And eventually they said look, he was taken to Portimao and he's in the morgue in Portimao. And I was like why couldn't you have told me that two days ago? So I literally grabbed the car keys and the guy was like, look, they won't let you see them until five o'clock, like they need to do whatever they need to do and five o'clock you can go and sit with them and you can stay there for as long as you want Five o'clock this evening. So I was like grand.
Speaker 1:So my whole day became focused on getting to Jeff. So I get out of the car and they made us wait in the waiting room and I remember like my, our family had flown over. So my brother, my older brother and sister come over. My little brother stayed here to try and organize stuff here and Jeff's brother and sister had come over and I remember and his best mate had come over and I remember holding Matt's hand outside the door of the room and just saying, if it's him, just squeeze my hand. And he was like okay, and like the second the door opened, he obviously squeezed my hand and I was like fuck, because like part of me was still holding on to some hope that he was in a hospital hooked up to an oxygen mask somewhere and they had got it all mixed up and it was all a big misunderstanding.
Speaker 1:So I just remember saying to the guy like what happened to him, like what, what do you think it was like? And he just said, oh, 90% heart attack. I was like wow, I was 37 years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No history of anything Like don't be healthy, like I just I just didn't connect. I was like I actually don't believe that for a second. But okay, if that's what you guys are saying. And they literally kicked us out about five minutes later. They're like sorry, we're closing. So we literally got kicked out about five minutes later, walked out, totally collapsed in a heap on the ground outside, and then the rest of the week was just kind of focused and trying to get them home.
Speaker 2:Is it a difficult process getting them home when they die abroad? You just have to shout the loudest.
Speaker 1:I think that's the only thing that got me through the week, like they're very flippant. So yeah, it's difficult because they won't tell you anything. It's all through the funeral services. They won't like they had his shorts that he had on him on the dinghy. They had them, they had his wedding ring, like all of the little things that you're like I need that back and I want his shorts. It's like this rigmarole of having to go through ten people just to get an answer to one thing. So we got to the airport and at this point I had no filter. So I went up to the information desk and I said, hey, if you're traveling home with a coffin, like where would the coffin be? And the woman's face was like dropped on me, like visibly kind of pregnant and she was like, sorry, are you with somebody?
Speaker 1:And I was like, yeah, yeah, like my mom and my sister are just dropping the rental car back, but like if there's a coffin in the airport somewhere, like can I go sit with the? No, I don't, let me go find that out for you. So the security guard came over and he was like can you tell me where your family are? I'd say they thought I was some crazy person walking through the airport.
Speaker 1:So they eventually put me in a wheelchair because my legs just wouldn't leg. They were like my knees kept buckling and I just felt so ill. And Aer Lingus were absolutely incredible. So they put us in I guess you know their little holding area. They kind of put you in. They wouldn't let anybody else in there. So they put myself, mum, ciara and Ronan in there.
Speaker 1:And I forget one of the air hostesses came over and her dad had died a month before and she was hysterical. She was just like I'm so sorry that you're going through this, like I'm in the depths of my cloud will lift. And at that point the grief hadn't even hit me. You're still stunned, completely shocked. I was like, oh my God, I'm really sorry. So then they got us a private taxi thing, so another little minibus put us on that and we got to the plane and all of the Aer Lingus staff were standing on the steps like a guard of honor. Oh my God, I just remember feeling like we were at home before we'd even left Faro Airport and walked up the steps and they were all like we're really sorry. And I was like God, thanks a million God, this is lovely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like a.
Speaker 1:VIP, but you're still in total shock of like the severity of what's going on. So we were kind of in row four. Then everybody started getting on the plane and I think that's when I was like oh, there's a lot of people here. What if somebody cops on what's going on here and like this is God. I don't like this, I don't want to be on the plane. So I just said to mom, I said I don't think I can do this and she was like you have to. She just kept saying you have to, like we're going home her set. And I just said can I just make sure that he's on the plane. And she went what? And I was like my husband, like will you just double check that he's on this flight with me? And she was like absolutely, let me go check. So she came back like tears in her eyes, like going.
Speaker 1:I can confirm he is right underneath you and I was like okay, like he's here, we're gonna go home together, as we had planned.
Speaker 1:So this was the last, the last flight home on the Thursday evening. So we landed late enough and again, dublin Airport absolutely incredible. Jeff was in school with a couple of guys from DAA, so they were just like unreal Met us off the plane. I didn't want to leave until I'd actually seen him coming off the plane. So I waited, and waited, and waited until I saw him coming off the plane. There was little golf cars there ready to collect him. I was like this is the most random thing.
Speaker 2:I've ever experienced in my life.
Speaker 1:Wrapped in bubble wrap.
Speaker 2:Oh really, yeah, the whole thing wrapped in bubble wrap.
Speaker 1:So off he went anyway to obviously go to the morgue at the airport, and I was just so focused on getting to him because we still hadn't really had much time with him. So we drove out to the morgue and met Quinns of Glass Tool the most amazing guys. So they had done Emerald's funeral in the January and Martin, the guy who looked after us, was just like an earth angel, just destined to be doing what he was doing. So we drove then out to Glass Tool and they transferred him into the coffin that I had picked in Portugal, upside down on a laptop, with the dongle thing connected, trying to, you know, as you do at 30 years old, pregnant, picking your husband's coffin. And yeah, then we drove him to my mom and dad's house. So I didn't want him in the funeral home for the night. I was like I just want to get him home, I just want to bring him home, I just want him at home and I don't want to be too, you know, detailed, whatever, but they didn't embalm him very well.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask, which was really horrific. So for such a young guy, for them to do such a crap job was even more traumatizing. So like, let it be a lesson to anybody out there Like it's the small details at the time that will really help a family. So when we got to Glastonbury it took them ages and I was like Martin, what's going on? I said this isn't a normal amount of time. Like you just literally had to get them from one coffin into the other and let us take them home. And all of this time in my head was less time that I got to spend with them. So I was like let me wrap it up here a little bit.
Speaker 1:And he went out and came, said Martin, spit it out. Like there's nothing that she's not able to hear right now, like she has heard it all. She has seen it all this week. Tell her what's wrong. So he just said they didn't embalm him properly. So normally if a body is traveling from a foreign country, you'll see quite a few little needle marks of where they've embalmed him and they could only find one and they were like we just they just didn't embalm him properly, so they just had to take a bit of time to try and Because his body had started to decompose.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah yeah, and he was like it's kind of a little bit like being travel sick, I suppose, but he just didn't travel very well. And I was like of course he didn't. It was just one thing after another you know, so we got him home and to me he looked absolutely perfect. I didn't care, I just wanted him at home and we were able to have the coffin open for a few hours, which was probably the most precious time that I had with him.
Speaker 1:But were you told, you can only have it open for a couple of hours because it's going to. So we kind of figured that out as the night went on. I suppose we didn't really have much of a choice that they were going to have to close the coffin and for out as the night went on. I suppose we didn't really have much of a choice that they were going to have to close the coffin, and for his sake, you know it just wasn't, so he arrived.
Speaker 2:But it's good to have this conversation as well, it's good to teach that. So people, whatever God forbid happens, people that they will understand that they have to make sure that that happens. But, then again, what could you have done differently? They wouldn't let you see him.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So even if you have been like, make sure I'm embalmed.
Speaker 1:The last thing you're thinking of is.
Speaker 2:are they embalming him properly?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Like you just assume that that's their job, like that they're going to do it properly. And especially because the international funeral services were involved, that they know, like this body is traveling home on a plane, Like it's not just a normal funeral in Portugal, this body has to now travel. And now Martin did say, to be fair, they've you know he was in the most beautiful coffin that they sent him home in. And Martin said that's quite unusual. They don't normally send a coffin home. It's kind of horrific. Like they'd normally just be in a body bag in the cargo, hold in. Like a refrigerator thing.
Speaker 1:Okay. So he said it's quite special and unusual that they did it, like the coffin was stunning, it was all like wood, carved and like it was beautiful. But yeah, so we got him home and then Martin arrived and then said Sinead, it's going to happen soon now, so just this is your last couple of hours, basically Like. So you tell him what you need to tell him. If there's anything else you want to put into the coffin with him, go ahead. So I ran upstairs, grabbed scissors and obviously I was under heavy supervision at this point, like 24 seven supervision but grabbed a pair of scissors, ran upstairs and I cut my wedding dress in half because he loved the top of my wedding dress, he loved the bodice part and I literally just hacked it in two and I put the bodice lying on top of him in the coffin. Like totally crazy shit when I think of it even the fact that you'd thought of that oh, I just was like he loved that.
Speaker 1:Oh, completely. And everyone looking at me going what is she doing? And then we bought a tiny little pair of Havianas in the airport for the baby, so I put both of them in and I'm sorry I put both. I should have kept one and put one in, but I put both of them in in. And then a little picture of myself him and Kobe are husky.
Speaker 1:So when they tell you that they're about to close the lid of the coffin, take whatever time you need to say whatever you need to say, to hold their hand, to give them a kiss, to do whatever you need to do, because there is nothing as final in life as the lid going on a coffin and never seeing a human being in the flesh ever again. Coffin, and never seeing a human being in the flesh ever again. It is the worst feeling in the world. And martin came in and he said look, you know we're going to close the coffin now. And I said okay, grant, and I sat on the couch and he was like you're gonna have to go and I was like absolutely not, like I'm not leaving him.
Speaker 1:And he just said you're not gonna let us close the coffin. I was like no, no, I will, I promise I will. And he was like you won't. And I knew I never, in fact I wouldn't have. I would have been like, oh no, actually it's just gonna be two more seconds. I just have to tell him this or it's just gonna be two more seconds or two more minutes he was like you won't let us do it like you have to leave the room like I.
Speaker 1:Just I'll never forget that feeling, the feeling of never being able to touch his hand or his skin or giving him a kiss, ever again you're still welling up the entire time you're telling this story. You know, and sometimes I can tell it like it's somebody else's story and then, other days it's another story, but I could see the kind of movements like mum and dad would like stained glass in their sitting room doors.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness, we had that too.
Speaker 1:We had that too. If you ever slammed it, you got in a lot of trouble. We blocked it all years ago, but yeah yeah, no, they were saying last thing, so I could see them all moving around in the room and I could see them lifting the lid on and like putting it on and just being like, oh fuck, that's it, that's it, I'm never going to see this guy again.
Speaker 1:Like you know, my hubby, the father, hopefully this child that I'm going to have, like it's just so final and you don't realize it until you're there. Yeah, we gave him a great sound off. He was buried in Shangana in Shankill. On the Saturday I just went to the funeral again like it was in Dundrum Church. I'm like we'd only got married there seven months before. So like next thing I'm walking up the same aisle but behind my husband husband's coffin. Like it's just the most surreal, most fucked up thing ever. Didn't really get through the funeral very well. I remember having to go to the bathroom and dry wretch halfway through. If I couldn't see the coffin, I was fine, but we were sitting, obviously, in the front row. I don't know whether you've ever heard that thing about being in the front row at a funeral. No, some people never get to be in the front row at a funeral, like, like, as in their entire life, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And there's people that are always in the front row.
Speaker 1:Yeah oh goodness Didn't like being in the front row. So I again got that awful blood draining feeling and I was like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to go, I'm going to go. And she said, no, no, dude. The doctor said put your legs up higher. So I was like when am I going to faint? So my brother and her carried me into the bathroom in the church and then I sat like to the side because I was like if I can't see the coffin, I may as well be at anybody's funeral, like I'm fine, because the picture and everything.
Speaker 2:I just couldn't do it and then, straight after the funeral, I got straight into the.
Speaker 1:There was people knocking on the window trying to get me out to say hello, and I just literally had like a blanket thing I must have looked like I don't know what.
Speaker 2:Michael Jackson trying to hide the dress I was literally about to say that.
Speaker 1:I was like can I say it? I literally had a blanket over me because I was like I just don't want to talk to anybody and then got to the grave down in Shangana his as well. So it was all very deja vu and I'll never forget. It was 13 degrees. So Jeff and I had the number 13 was huge in our life. So it's like our number lived on exit 13 in the m50, like he had a horrific life experience on the 13th of November many years before that. But just the number 13 was a huge thing for us. It was always a number that came up whenever we did anything good or bad?
Speaker 1:obviously, yeah, a bit of both. And yeah, he died. Sorry, not he died, he died on the 31st of July but he on the day we drove into the graveyard and it was like the 6th of August and it was 13 degrees on the button and I was like chilly for the middle of August or the beginning of August in Ireland and then the heavens opened. We just literally the funeral, the burial, had just finished and it started absolutely pouring out of the heavens. We were like that's totally his sign to get your ass to the pub Time to go. But yeah, I again remember very little of the afters. It was in Phillies and the Lefterson Racecourse.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, oh, my goodness.
Speaker 1:I remember that place. I was so fab, christenings and everything.
Speaker 2:Many a night spent in 92, many a night spent there, yeah but yes, we had the the afters there. Carrie would have been there as well. I've hooked into Carrie a few times.
Speaker 1:I actually I was going to say to her this morning, should we try and get her to come, because, like that's a whole other, I would love for her to sit down with best friend's perspective, because only for those girls, and especially her, I don't think I'd still be here. Like when I think back, I was under 24-7 supervision. They never left my side so between we're called like the forever four, but Sarah, ciara, carrie and my family, like my siblings, they had like a rota, they didn't leave me like and they all were working.
Speaker 1:they were all on annual leave that they had to take. Like when I think back now didn't leave me like, and they all were working, they were all on annual leaves that they had to take.
Speaker 2:Like when I think back now, I'm like and was this because they were worried that you might do something to yourself? I'd say there was an element of it, yeah.
Speaker 1:The day he died I sat on the roof of the villa, like a five bed villa in Portugal, like hot tub on the roof and looking down at the patio below and just being like there's just a little lean forward there and this would all end. And then my other dark humor part goes now. You'd break every limb in your body, yeah, but, you know you'd end up paralyzed, but you'd still be alive, sinead, because you know, yeah, it just wouldn't be that easy for you.
Speaker 1:It would always be a catch, and the only thing at the time which is so fucked up, the only thing that stopped me from doing it was I felt that if I died by suicide, that I would go that way. But Jeff died naturally, so he went that way and we wouldn't get to see each other. Okay, so that's my crazy brain at the time. That's what stopped me from doing it. It wasn't even being pregnant, which is really awful when I think back.
Speaker 1:Well it's just your brain's way of processing it, isn't it? And I didn't really think about the pregnancy at all, like it just wasn't my focus. It wasn't like at the time, like we had no life insurance. We were renting in London. We I'm like we had no life insurance, we were renting in London, we were both self-employed so we had no pensions from our jobs. Like I had nothing. We had whatever bit of money I had in the account from our wedding presents and literally that was it. Like I moved back home with my parents and my dog pregnant at 30. Like I just I was so petrified at what lay ahead, and having a baby was just a whole other responsibility that I didn't even know if I was going to be able to do. But obviously, as I got more pregnant it gave me such a focus.
Speaker 2:Did you find out what actually happened, jeff? What was the issue with him? So did he have a heart?
Speaker 1:attack. No, so we got the autopsy back on. I again, another fight. So I was on to the embassy all the time about the autopsy and I was told it would be upwards from a year before we'd get the autopsy. But Hollistreet were like we need to know if something genetic went on here, like something could be wrong with the baby. We need to, like it'd be handy if we actually knew what happened to him.
Speaker 1:So I fought and fought and fought. They eventually sent it out on Christmas Eve. So Lily was born on the 11th of December, which is a whole other story. I was kept in for five days because I had a fourth degree tear and just not so nice experience, and then got home for three days, I think, and then had to go back into hospital again, back into Hollis Street again, because all my stitches, everything had broken down, everything was infected, had to go back in again and then they found erectile vaginal fistula, so I had the most horrific delivery and aftermath of the delivery, and obviously you're grieving your husband, you're giving birth to your baby and you don't know if the daddy's gone.
Speaker 2:So your whole mindset even would have made it just 10 times more difficult for you, wouldn't it?
Speaker 1:It was the most bittersweet moment of my life, like giving birth to my first child, like I always wanted four kids, like we always wanted a big family. My mum and my sister were there. They were amazing.
Speaker 2:They kept the mood very light, were the nursing staff in that lovely as well and sympathetic.
Speaker 1:They were amazing, but they wouldn't let me have a C-section, and I wanted to have a C-section, I didn't want to go through labor without them. And they just said look, the recovery period is much better, the recovery period is much quicker, like, you don't need to have a c-section, everything in this pregnancy has gone perfectly.
Speaker 1:let's just do this, you know and my waters went at home was 38 weeks. I should have just gone in and had a c-section and got that baby out and had a normal c-section recovery. But everything started to go backwards, like pregnancy wasn't or the labor wasn't progressing. Then they gave me oxytocin. Then it slowed everything down and it just she ended up being ventouse and that's what caused all the damage in the end and I then had to go for surgery.
Speaker 1:So I was petrified, like I handed my newborn baby over to my mom, my sister, and had to go in for surgery by myself. Like it was all really overwhelming and it was just too much at the time and then had that whole experience of everything happening after and I felt really bitter. I was like I just wanted to enjoy something and you've taken that away from me because I can't fucking sit down. Like I'm on a bloody ring cushion now. I had to breastfeed lying down on my side because I couldn't sit for too long. They had me on laxatives because I had the fistula, so they thought that it was better to have me on laxatives. So I couldn't leave the house because I was.
Speaker 2:Can you explain what a fistula is to people that don't understand?
Speaker 1:A fistula is basically a tear the whole way through from your vagina to your bum. So every time I went to the toilet or every time I farted anything, it was coming out both holes. So I couldn't really leave the house on laxatives, because once you started going to the toilet you had no control. You had to get to the toilet. So then they referred me to a colorectal specialist in Vincent's because it was totally out of their expertise.
Speaker 1:They were like, look, we don't know what to do here, and met with him and he said, look, I'm going to take you off the laxatives because it's actually not having the right effect. You're actually okay to go to the bathroom normally, so let's leave the laxatives and then you can actually leave the house. I was like, okay, and basically because it was so badly infected, he said, look, it takes about 12 weeks for an infection to just heal itself down there especially, so we're just going to leave it. No antibiotics, no, nothing, let's just leave it, let it heal itself and then, once it's healed, we'll operate. And I was like, right, okay, so it was 12 weeks of awfulness and she's a C-section would have done much better.
Speaker 1:I would have been healed and home and anything but what I went through. So then I had more surgery the following March, so she would have been 12 weeks-ish, I think, when I had the second bit of surgery or the first bit in the fistula. So then by the end of actually funnily, jeff's first anniversary is when I got the all clear to like play sports and walk properly or do whatever like.
Speaker 2:Do you still suffer today from issues?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do Fuck. It's a pain in the ass. Literally. Sorry, I asked you about the autopsy report, and then we got into the births, sorry, so I got it on Christmas Eve. It was all in Portuguese, so then I had to try and get it translated, so I'm sitting on Google.
Speaker 2:Translate there's no Google Lens there. No, not even Instagram back then. No, I know.
Speaker 1:Instagram had just started.
Speaker 2:It's like two pictures on.
Speaker 1:Instagram. So I got the autopsy, tried to translate it myself. Mom was like Sinead, this is ridiculous. So a friend of Jeff's actually one of his friends is Portuguese and he said, look, she can do it for you. And I was like, amazing. So because every translation place was closed until like mid-January or something. So we got it back and the official cause of death was accidental drowning. Yep, accidental drowning. I was like, but what happened before that? So I then sent all the pictures I had in the water. So we realized that one of the photos, Jeff is swimming away from me and it's just before, the photo of him lying on his back staring at the sky and his left ear is about four or five times the size it should be. And then the next one he's lying down and his ear is huge. Was it like a sting or something that he got? So that's what we. We think he was stung by jellyfish. That's ultimately what we.
Speaker 2:we think that was like an anaphylactic shock he got.
Speaker 1:It had all of the signs he couldn't breathe, his hand was flicking, it looked like he was in some sort of seizure shock. So I sent all the photos over to the Portuguese. But everything has to go through the embassy, so everything has to go through the Department of Foreign Affairs. They send it over to Portugal. Portugal replies to the Department of Foreign Affairs. They sent it back. It's all fucking paper trail nonsense. So everything took months to do. But they basically wrote back and questioned why I had taken so many photos of my husband in the water.
Speaker 1:That was the answer you still don't have the definitive answer. No, they deemed toxicology tests an unnecessary expense because he drowned, so I sent the autopsy off.
Speaker 2:So they didn't do toxicology on him. No so then there's no way of telling no Jeez, and we only found this out obviously way after. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I sent it off to the state pathologist at the time, mary Casting. She sent me back the most gorgeous letter and just had that. Part of the autopsy did mention thickening of the heart wall. So there is a chance that it could have been hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, but we will never know. So Lily has been checked and Lily's heart has been checked and I kind of freaked out for the first few years of her life going, oh my god, it's genetic. If he had it, she's going to get it and she's going to die too. And she's been absolutely fine. Every time she's had jack, she's had a perfectly beautifully healthy heart. So but yeah, we'll never really know which is really shit. It's just a little bit of closure, even though it probably would have made me more angry at the time if it had been something that preventable. I don't know like, yeah, you know, a jellyfish thing is pretty random. It's not preventable, other than you don't ever go swimming in the sea, you know. Yeah, but that summer, but that summer.
Speaker 2:But also is it unusual for someone to have such a reaction, a deadly reaction to it.
Speaker 1:So that summer there was an influx of Portuguese man-of-war and they're deadly jellyfish and 13 people died that summer in Portugal in the water. Okay, Of some illnesses in the sea.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:All along the kind of same stretch.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And the stretch. Okay, the water was unusually cold, like when he got in. I remember him going, oh it's cold and like it was just that. Apparently that was quite unusual for that time of year, like 31st of July.
Speaker 1:It shouldn't have been freezing, it should have been kind of like I mean not roasting, but it shouldn't have been freezing cold anyway. There was a few weird kind of occurrences just kind of makes you think, like Jesus, when your time is up, it really is up, like so how did you navigate the whole new mom thing with a sore arse, arse hanging off you and new widow, new widow and and colic, colic, oh lovely, just throw it all into this.
Speaker 2:And your parents? Obviously they were a good support to you.
Speaker 1:Yeah so without, as like without family, friends. Parents like my mom stepped into jeff shoes immediately, so like she was the one that was there taking Lily at whatever time of the night when Lily had screamed, so Lily would scream from 5pm until 5am. That was her thing. I really wanted to breastfeed for like a year or two and that didn't happen.
Speaker 2:Did you have visions of yourself like in long floaty dresses? You know?
Speaker 1:with your hands. Long grass, this is it dresses.
Speaker 2:You know sitting amongst long grass. You know feeling that. You know I know so many women that beat themselves up about that, but it is. I always say, breastfeeding is a marathon and you had so much going on with you when you talk to people and they tell you how breastfeeding works.
Speaker 1:it's not. Your body just doesn't go. You've had a baby, here's your milk, there's a diet, there's a rest, there's a process and there's also even know myself from when, and even just my sister just had a baby.
Speaker 2:but even just when you're trying to pump, and if you're trying to pump and you're in any way stressed, no milk comes out. If your nose is really chill, it loads milk comes out. So you were going through, you were still grieving, did you to grief counselling?
Speaker 1:So I didn't for a year, Like the first year. I just there was so much to navigate between my bits down below trying to get that fixed, Still grieving them.
Speaker 2:Jesus.
Speaker 1:Still, I know, still, still. And that like I remember sitting in Golden Street and she just said the doctor had come in and the one thing I said to mom and I'll never forget if they fit me with a poo bag, I am going to kill myself. And mum went fair enough, fine, yeah, that's fine you've been through so much now.
Speaker 1:That's absolutely fine that's the last straw. So she comes into the room and she just because I was like I was pooing everywhere and I was wiping and knowing it wasn't just where it was supposed to be and they wouldn't listen to me. Anyway, she came in and she just said look, you have a thing called erectile vaginal fistula. So the options are, and the first thing she mentioned was a bag. And I just went and I just burst out crying. I was like I can't believe this happened to me. And then she said that there's nothing they could do about the stitches because they can't restitch anything. The same wound, if it's broken down, they can't restitch it. And I was like you can't leave me like this, like you can't leave me like this, and she just said well, it's just cosmetic.
Speaker 1:I was like have you seen it down there? I'll never forget feeling so like dehumanized. Yeah. I was like like it looks horrendous. I was like I know I don't currently have a husband, but like it doesn't even matter, it's's for your own sense of self.
Speaker 2:Like, maybe just fix it a little bit.
Speaker 1:And, to be fair, the guy in Vincent's, he did the surgery for the fistula but also said to me I very much tidied everything up down there for you. So it'll be a bit sore, but there's a lot of stitching, but it's looking a lot better than it was.
Speaker 2:You look great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I actually felt really grateful to him. I was like thank you for fixing my vagina. It's so important. But it was just it wasn't at the time and I just couldn't believe that. I was like surely this isn't normal.
Speaker 2:If it was a man's penis, I tell you it would have been absolutely high top priority it's crazy, just cosmetic.
Speaker 1:I was like it's not like I looked down there every day, but like I'd like to think if somebody did that it would look actually kind of normal and not like a horror movie, like the first year was very much spent surviving, I think is the only way to put it. Lily obviously had a horrific colic, tried to breastfeed, couldn't remember the midwife coming out, going Sinead. I know you wanted to starving and you just have to stop you're. You're literally driving yourself demented here with this. So I stopped the day of her christening I think she was god, it was February, so she would have been a couple of months old. I stopped breastfeeding. I was fucking best thing I ever did. Oh my god. I almost felt like I got a bit of my life back and she just became a much happier baby. I remember I never forget the first night. She slept through. She just slept through.
Speaker 1:I was like all right, that's normal. We had a year of survival and then I kind of went to a few counsellors and I say this to loads of people so I I went to three or four before I found my gal who lived two minutes from my parents. I literally, I'd say five houses around and that's they say as well.
Speaker 2:Even with any kind of therapy, you see, if you build yourself up, if you have to build yourself up to go to a therapist, and then you go to a therapist and you have a really bad experience you may never go back. So it is important that people know that it is so important.
Speaker 1:If you do not gel with the first one or the second one or the third one, that's OK, but there is somebody out there who you are going to gel with and you will end up having the most amazing relationship almost with them with, and you will end up having the most amazing relationship almost with them like. So I went to Patricia weekly initially, then every fortnight, then every month, then whenever I needed her kind of thing, from 2012 until about 20 I think about 2015, 2016. I think we still would have met up for coffee after she retires and everything. Like she was an older, not older gosh. She'll kill me for saying that she was older than me.
Speaker 1:I know she's since retired, but to say she saved my life is probably a bit dramatic, but I feel in a lot of ways, that she did. Between her and my best friend, they became my people, who just knew how to manage me in one way, but like, just helped me through it, like and I'm obviously really chatty I don't think this podcast is ever going to end today and I'm a talker and I think that went in my favor in a lot of ways. Like I talk and if there's something wrong, I'll say it to somebody. Or if I don't feel comfortable in a situation, I'll say it to somebody. So I think that did help me in a lot of ways.
Speaker 2:Okay, sinead, so I know, on your podcast bio you say Jeff's widow, green's wife. So you went on and you did find another lovely man.
Speaker 1:I did. How lucky am I? I know.
Speaker 2:And was that difficult? Did you have to go on loads of dates to find him, or did it happen very naturally and spontaneously? How soon after Jeff's death did you decide, or did you think, that you might want to find love somewhere else?
Speaker 1:so my first god, I can't even remember when it was. It was obviously after all of my, it was well after a year and the first guy that I met I didn't know as in, like, he was a friend of a friend and that was kind of the get it.
Speaker 2:That's a terrible thing to say get out of the way, but it was a get it out of the way situation as in meeting someone or having everything, a relationship, a quick yeah, it was never going to be a relationship.
Speaker 1:It was just to kiss somebody else. I think, okay, god, like even the thought of it, like I'm going oh god, I'm sure he didn't mind I hope not.
Speaker 2:What's his name do we tell everyone?
Speaker 1:And then I did go out with a guy for a few months and he was lovely. I really, really, really liked him. He was a really nice guy, but I wasn't for him and I can totally understand. Like I'm very fiery, I'm very reactive, I'm really like rah, and I was probably like that with him and he was just like nah, not doing this. So we went out for a few months and then he just decided look, this isn't for me. And I said that's certainly okay. I had introduced Lily to him, but Lily was only one and a bit at the time, like one and a half-ish and she loved him as well.
Speaker 1:Like I mean it. Just I don't know whether it was a bit of a learning curve for me in a way. So I was very guarded after that. I like to say that I was heartbroken really strong, but there was definitely a big sadness after that ended, because I kind of felt a bit human again, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you'll know, if he ever listens to this, he's going to know who he is. And then so my, we play, I play hockey, and girls that I played hockey with In the UK, one of them was getting married In Lucca In Italy, and she asked me Obviously, invited me over, and I was like I'm absolutely not going to a wedding On my own, not happening. And mum was like you are.
Speaker 2:I'm surprised you ever travelled again. You are absolutely going to a wedding On your own.
Speaker 1:And oh, I know, yeah, leaving the country in Turkey the year after.
Speaker 2:Oh stop.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, no, my life is a book. I'm telling you now, a movie that people wouldn't actually believe. We went on our first holiday after Jeff died and dad had a massive heart attack the day he landed in Turkey and ended up in hospital for two days. I can't cope with this now. Mum was like you're absolutely going to this wedding you can't knock out. So I went over. Now I knew Michael when I lived in the UK because we both played for the same hockey club. He played for the equivalent of the men's threes, I played for the ladies threes. They all drank together afterwards, but I was engaged and he just had a girlfriend, like a long girlfriend at the time. So we never spoke to each other. We were never introduced, but randomly. Now, if you look back at all those photos of me in he's photobombing them all, he's in them all he's literally behind me with his girlfriend spooky stalker.
Speaker 1:Some of them like that's so random, like so random yeah like hockey balls, hockey dinners, finds meetings all the time. He's in all of the pictures, but we never spoke because I was in a relationship. He was in a relationship not that you can't speak to other men when you're in a relationship, but we just didn't new evidence is coming to light that Jeff is a jealous man.
Speaker 2:Oh, brilliant.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, we were in. I was at the wedding, and the first night no, the first day we were in Luca, in the little village, absolutely stunning, and Michael and his best mate Mark rock up in one of those cycle things like I don't know what you call them I can't think of the name with the cover like a rickshaw type thing, that kind of thing and they're doing like speeding.
Speaker 1:We're all having coffee and he sits down. And we're all like, hey, and we had been talking about boob jobs just before they sat down and that was the icebreaker. So he, him and Mark sat down and I think he's like, oh, you've just landed yourselves at the perfect time. We're talking about boob jobs. And like, obviously two boys were just like, oh nice one who's had them, who hasn't done?
Speaker 1:It was very much like hey green, hey hoss, kind of situation. There was no hi, you know, my name is Sinead Like he just sat down and we just started talking. But then we just kind of kept talking and the banter was more and it was the first time that I had actually felt proper little butterflies again, like proper, proper ones and I was like oh, oh, wow.
Speaker 1:What's this feeling Like? This is kind of nice, but all day there was chat, chat, chat. Went down for dinner. That night he was sitting beside me, chatted all night. He went up to get a glass of wine and I'm kind of flirting my ass off with this guy at this point and I'm flirting my ass off with this guy at this point and there just doesn't seem to be any anything back, so I was like okay, maybe, sinead, maybe this is just a one-sided thing that he's not vibing this at all.
Speaker 1:And then he was like I'm going to the bar, Do you want a drink? I said, yeah, you know, I'll have another the bar myself. He legs it after me. He's like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I literally went to go to the bar and one of the lads handed me a beer. I totally forgot. I was like no, you're great, don't worry about it. Played totally like whatever, went and sat back down and he's just like I don't know. His whole demeanor changed immediately and I was like okay, I don't know whether he was like not coming near me because of who I am or what had happened like do you do?
Speaker 2:you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:You start going into all other mental stuff. So we go outside, we're all walking home, had a tiny little like peck on the lips, kiss, and I just I just remember going oh my God, I actually really fancy this guy. And then the next day was the day of the wedding. We were all like completely done up in our glad rags and I just remember seeing him going oh, hello and yeah like the rest is literally history.
Speaker 1:So he lived in the uk at the time and I was in dublin, obviously so you're an awful thing for men that live in the uk, don't you?
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, anyone that doesn't live here, it's very random well, he's south african, so he's actually south african living in the uk. Okay, so he came over two weekends after the wedding, so we stayed in the UK. So he came over two weekends after the wedding, so we stayed in the Beacon. It was open at the time and I remember mum going just go and live a little, go and have a bit of crack, so off. I went, spent the night in the Beacon, had the most incredible time, and then he was going to a wedding in South Africa three weeks after that. He was like come with me. I was Absolutely not. I am never going to South Africa. It's the most unsafe country in the whole world.
Speaker 2:Did you not know that I'm cursed whenever I travel?
Speaker 1:I'm not leaving the country. Yeah, and I sat down and I was like like, why not? I was in that real fuck it stage. I've never been Like, why not go? Like Jeff and I had all of these master plans to go and visit all these countries and we never got to do Okay. So I told Michael I was going to come, booked a flight, rode a wheel Funniest thing ever. I was convinced I was going to get carjacked and die while I was over there. So I sat down. I went to South.
Speaker 2:Africa years and years ago as well, and the whole carjacking. I remember saying to someone.
Speaker 1:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:I know that when you stop at traffic lights you just keep going because the car it doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:Just in case anyone is thinking of going. Such rumours Flew over. It is the most incredible country in the world. It is so beautiful. The wedding was otherworldly. It was just absolutely stunning. We had the most crack. It was just like we had known each other for years. And even though we had known of each other for years, it was just so easy. It was just. It was just easy.
Speaker 1:And Michael knew my story. He knew about Jeff, he knew about Lily, so he kind of came into the whole thing with his eyes wide open. Well, I'd like to think he did, Eyes wide open. His dad was really honest with him when we were at the wedding. He could obviously see that we were really I don't know, connected or whatever. And his dad just said look, you're not just taking Sinead on, You're taking on a little girl here too. So you need to be very, very sure that this is what you want. And I think it was a really good, important thing for Paddy to say to Michael. So that was September 2013.
Speaker 1:So two years after Jeff died and he moved over in 2015. To Jeff Tite, and he moved over in 2015. And then in 2017, then we put a deposit down on a house. Oh yeah, and I just said to him look, I'm 36 and I know you would like to have kids, so I'm ticking on here. Is he younger than you? He's only a year, oh right. So I was like I think it's something we should really start thinking about.
Speaker 2:And had he taken on the kind of the role of dad for Lily at that stage, 100% oh yeah, 100%.
Speaker 1:Does Lily call him dad? Not, yet there were bits that it would come out of her mouth and he'd be like, oh, but it wasn't a thing.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a it.
Speaker 1:And then he moved into mum and dad's for a few months before we moved into the house and that's when she kind of started to call him dad. I don't even remember a time when it happened. It just happened so naturally and so nicely, but anyway. So, yeah, I said to him about having a baby and he was like he's an only child. So he was like, yeah, no, I would love for Lily to have a sibling as well. It'd be great for her. So I said, right, well, like I'm gonna come off the pill, it'd probably take a while for it to wear off and for me to get pregnant, because I'm older now, my body's been through hell and I think I was pregnant two weeks later.
Speaker 1:Okay, it was a bit of a like oh shit. So I was in work in Cavitelli and I was chatting to my friend and she goes have you done a test? I was like I know it's gonna be ridiculous like I literally had that silly non-period period when I came off the pill, like I haven't done anything since, like it's obviously still regulating.
Speaker 1:I'm just like just leg it up to tons and get a test and do a test. So did that and lo and behold, straight away, big pink line. I was like, oh shit, like we weren't even in the house yet. So I got home, told Michael. Michael, his reaction was amazing. He was absolutely thrilled but shocked. I'm going. You told me this, you told me we had a bit of time here to plan this, so we moved in. So Dylan was due in March.
Speaker 2:Please tell me, you got a.
Speaker 1:C-section. I was standing at the back of the church at a funeral in January and my waters went in the church, okay, and I remember being in the disabled toilet ringing mom going yeah, no, my waters are properly going here. I think I need to get to Hollis Street Six weeks early. I'm going, oh dear God, like why can't something just go the way it's supposed to go? And on my notes it had that I was never allowed to have another natural delivery again because I couldn't like.
Speaker 1:everything would have just been torn asunder again. But again got into the hall, going to the hall of street contractions were less than a minute apart and, like the midwives, oh yeah, no, you're grand. I was like, no, I have to have a C-section. So if this baby is arriving today, you need to start making some sort of plan here. Oh yeah, no, don't worry. No, no, you're fine, love, Don't worry. And I'm going. Oh, my of went, oh, like, almost like she knew how bad that was if I actually did have a natural delivery. So it all happened quite quickly after that. So, yeah, he arrived that day six weeks early, went into NICU for a couple of weeks. He was grand, just his lungs needed a bit more time he was five pounds seven.
Speaker 1:He was tiny and we had literally moved into the house two weeks before he arrived, so it was just a gorgeously amazing time. It was lovely and Lily absolutely doubted on her baby. They kill each other now. They have done for quite a few years.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, they all go through that. I noticed on your Instagram page you say Jeff's widow, green's wife, and does Green, or Michael, as his name is, does he have an issue with the way you continue to hold Jeff's light?
Speaker 1:So when I met Michael first, I was very open Again.
Speaker 1:Instagram wasn't really a big thing it was becoming a thing and I had done a podcast and I had started to gain a few followers from the podcast and I just very openly said to him look, obviously I post about Jeff a little bit. How does it make you feel? And when I met him, first I just posted. But then when we kind of started to get together properly, I used to say to him look, I'm going to post this with this picture, is that okay with you? And every time he was like of course it's okay, sinead, like it's not, like you're saying that you don't really love me, that you like you're.
Speaker 2:You know he was like you're, you're writing really helpful things for people like and and Jeff and I think that that's the whole thing like Jeff was a massive part of your life. He was your husband and the father of your daughter. Yeah, and I think to expect someone to just forget that because they've now married someone else isn't really fair, and I suppose our hearts are big enough to love everyone, aren't they Like past and present?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, like Michael, is an incredible human being in that. Like he's so accepting of me and of the situation he loves Lily to her core as if she was his. Like he's so accepting of me and of the situation he loves Lily to her core as if she was his. Like he's known her since she was just two. I can't even describe just how amazing it is for him to be able to just embrace it all and to watch it. Like I mean, he was a big boy, like I didn't force him into anything. Like he he wanted to be with me and to be with us and to make a life together.
Speaker 1:Knowing the history, knowing about Jeff, knowing there was a great, great love before my great, great love with him. And I think it's really important for people to know you can, you can still talk about the person who's gone in a respectful way, to the person who's still here. Like it's not a bad thing to do. Like I always say to people, if Green died tomorrow, like I would absolutely be exactly the same for him. Like you know, if I died, I'd like to think that somebody might write a post about me on Instagram.
Speaker 2:But it's also helping people that that are going through it as well, and you do a lot of work with grief and grieving people, don't you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I again because of Instagram, like people would kind of message I'm sure you get it as well Like you get messages all the time from people and I always try and reply because they're always to me, people who are reaching out because they need some sort of not even guidance, but just somebody who kind of gets us, who gets the feeling or the experience or whatever they're going through at the time, is it?
Speaker 2:mainly people that have lost partners that reach out to you, or is it all kinds of grief?
Speaker 1:Lost partners and now fertility, because we had a bit of a hellish journey to get to number three. We had four back-to-back miscarriages during COVID. So from 2020, we started trying for number three, lost our first pregnancy at like about six and a half weeks. Then I had an ectopic pregnancy off the back of that. Then we lost a baby at nine and a half weeks, called him Charlie. He had trisomy 21. So he had Down syndrome. They sent him off for testing and then we had a chemical pregnancy. So we kind of had one of each nearly apart for testing. And then we had a chemical pregnancy. So we kind of had one of each nearly apart from a molar. We had everything else.
Speaker 1:We had a chemical pregnancy in the January and at that point I was like I'm absolutely done here and that's kind of where most, I think, of my following has come from now is the fertility side of things, because it's a lot of moms that were either going through the same hell that I was going through at the time or moms that are pregnant at the same time that I eventually had Albie. But I started a thing called Spark a Life, which was a candle so random that, like the last attempt that we had was, thankfully, albie.
Speaker 2:Was it an IVF journey that you had?
Speaker 1:No, it was very much a last hope that we could do this and that it would actually stick. So I had no problem getting pregnant. I could blink and get pregnant, Totally fertile. Everything was great. But I just couldn't stay pregnant. So I started lighting a candle the first day of the two week wait and I called it Spark of Life. So when you lit the candle that was your little spark. That was like so random the sperm meeting the egg, the spark to connect the two, and then the flame growing was your baby growing and I lit a candle every single night of that pregnancy and I hashtagged it spark a life and it became a bit of a thing. So everybody started doing it with me. People that weren't even trying for babies were doing it in their house to try and get this pregnancy to continue. It was so random but so lovely at the same time. And it fecking worked because I ended up with a baby at the end of it and as far as I concerned it was those Irish candles that did it.
Speaker 2:For me, irish candles are very powerful, very powerful, aren't they?
Speaker 1:But I actually started a little charity then after. So I made a Spark Life candle and I gave all the proceeds of the candle to miscarriage and fertility clinics in Ireland. And I'll never forget the first batch that I sold was the day that I went back to Portugal for the first time since Jeff died and I hit the like active live thing on the website as I was getting on the plane and when I landed they'd sold out. I actually couldn't get over it, like it was just a gorgeous focus at the time and trying to give other people hope and trying to say, like obviously you're candid, you can't manifest baby. I get that like, but it just helps you to hold on to something. And I'll be arrived on the 13th of December. He was due on the 30th. I was scheduled in for a c-section on the 16th and he arrived on the 13th, which I just even Michael would acknowledge the fact of the 13th and it being such a huge number in my life for him to arrive that day. It just was like the final little piece of everything. And that's another thing about Michael, like there's so many things that he'll say oh well, I suppose we can thank the big man for that like or we can suppose we can thank your man for that like this.
Speaker 1:He knows how much of a part of of my life Jeff is, even throughout my life, and it's 14 years ago, and that's also another reason why I kind of wanted to chat to you. Like, as you say, the Irish are so incredible at doing funerals, we are amazing at the send-offs, but we're kind of crap with the grief. We're very much like, oh no, you can't. It's so disrespectful that she's talking about jeff on her instagram page when she has a new husband. I'm like why is it disrespectful? I have two great loves in my life. I've got lots more. I've obviously got lily and my boys. But, like the men in my life, the two men that I was so lucky to meet, just because Jeff is dead doesn't mean he's not a huge part of it still like. He's still very much there and it's okay to talk about him. It's okay to post this picture every now and again, does Lily?
Speaker 2:ask about him, or is she interested in him at all, or is she not really, because he's never really like. Apart from you talking about him, he hasn't been there as a presence, it's really hard for her, like really, really hard, because Jeff was an amazing guy.
Speaker 1:But Lydia's told constantly what an amazing guy Jeff was and to be told that and to never have met him, even though he's half of her, like she's the spitting image of him, okay, oh my god, she's as mini me, like like as she's got older it's been like my heart has broken a little bit more and more for her, because they turn kind of eight, nine and the questions start to come and it's like why, why did this happen? Like why isn't my dad here? Why? And I can't answer any of the questions because I don't know. So she gives Michael a really hard time, like in a fun but also grumpy teenager way, and it kills him because he's just like what's the guy got to do, like to to get this one to love me? So she gives Michael a really hard time, like in a fun but also grumpy teenager way, and it kills him because he's just like what's a guy got to do to get this one to love me and give me affection? I'm like good luck with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:But they have a gorgeous relationship.
Speaker 2:And I don't know. It's really tricky for her and I think any kind of parenting is difficult, whether it's a step parent role or you know.
Speaker 1:Throw, whether it's a step-parent role or you know, throw in a dead dad and it's a whole other challenge. And it is. It's quite hard to have like appointments for kids or just. As you know, the waiting lists are absolutely out the doors. You're trying to get her into anything and it's a two-year wait or two and a half year wait. You know it's difficult, but I think she deals with it in gorgeous ways. There's photographs of Jeff in her rooms, photographs of Jeff in the bathroom downstairs, Like he's around our house, you know.
Speaker 2:And did she see any of his family?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so she'd still very much see his sister and brother and his dad. Okay, and obviously Jeff's nieces are still like that's how we met. I used to babysit the two girls and that's how we met, how Jeff and I met, and the two girls and that's how we met, how Jeff and I met, and she's very like his side. She's very like one of his nieces, especially one of his nieces. So, yeah, like, that connection for me is hugely, hugely important. I don't see them half as much as I'd like to, like everyone's life is so busy, but for her as well to have that connection with them is just massively important. You know, it's just it's so hard to navigate Like it's so so hard to navigate, Like it's so so hard to navigate and it's a lifelong navigation. Like it's not wanting to upset anybody, not wanting to hurt anybody, Like you're just trying to survive this horrific, horrific life experience and you don't always get it right.
Speaker 2:And is it true, with grief, that time is a good healer, or is that does? It depend on the situation.
Speaker 1:I think, as time goes on, you learn to live with it. So you learn coping mechanisms. You learn how to live with your grief, but not let the grief weigh you down completely.
Speaker 1:So like there's loads of things that I do, like I'm really active, I have to keep busy Like I do photography at the weekends. I work full time during the week. I I like we've obviously now started this lovely new thing called good grief self a friend of mine and it's a grief hub to like try and help people understand more about grief and understand that it's. It's a really shit thing for somebody to go through, but you can actually be a huge part of it and help them through it, and my main thing with it is to try and turn your grief into something good by helping the next person through their grief. I always kind of felt that what happened to Jeff, it's all in vain if I don't do something with the experience after. If that makes any sense yeah no, it absolutely does.
Speaker 1:And like I'm going to the Camino in September. It's the one thing that I always wanted to do and Jeff always talked about doing it. Like it's walking, we want to do the whole thing from leading a group and I'm like like I can't wait to do that with people who get it, and like a group of 50 people and we're all just walking and talking and healing and being inappropriate and having a dark sense of humor and not being judged for it.
Speaker 2:Like my humor is shockingly bad have you held back on the podcast? Oh yeah, oh god, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, if you cancelled a little tiny circle of people that get my dark humour did you listen to the podcast that I did with Dimna Little about grief. I listened to your one with your brother, which I thought was absolutely brilliant oh yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:I did one with Dimna Little and her mother died there recently enough and she's Dimna's a bit of a comedian well, a bit of a one. She is a comedian. But that podcast went in so many different directions but it was so funny in some instances and then like crying and others it's amazing, I don't mind, sometimes humour will get you through.
Speaker 1:So, like my best friend again, she is one of. Probably her and my little brother are the only two that I really unleash unleash the full extent of my dark humor on, because they just totally get it and they're as bad as I am.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you need someone to get in your day and day, don't you?
Speaker 1:Or that's in the same lane as you, but you see like if you don't laugh like you'll actually go insane and you'll do nothing but cry, like there's so many parts of my story since 2011 that are actually so fucking ridiculous that they're a bit unbelievable. So so it's like we'll just make a little bit of a joke about it.
Speaker 2:When you said about your dad having the heart, I was like I don't even want to go into that story, Sinead, that's a whole other thing.
Speaker 1:But even after Jeff died, my two bridesmaids, like Carrie's dad, passed away six weeks after Jeff, and then my other best friend, her brother, died by suicide three weeks after that. Her brother died by suicide three weeks after that. So in those nine weeks after Jeff died we used to call my parents' house morning headquarters because we'd just sit at the table and drink tea and plan funerals. That's what we did with our lives when I was 30 and pregnant, like no joke, no word of a lie. Like that became our total and utter piss-take of a life. Yeah, but yeah, it actually did. Full-on is actually my life.
Speaker 2:Full on is actually my life Sinead.
Speaker 1:what advice would you give young people today? There is so much. My first bit of advice would be delete Snapchat. Delete Snapchat. Your power is in your reaction. I think is a huge bit of important advice to give any young person, because we're so quick to react in life to things that may not go our way, or maybe they do go our way and we still don't have a very good reaction to them. And I even try to say to Lily with friendships and bullying, whatever else goes on that her power in all of this is how she reacts to it, and I just think it's not really told enough to young people just to take a breath, take 10 seconds, take whatever you need to take, but just your power is in how you react to things in life, and it's jobs, it's friendships, it's family, it's everything and what's the meaning of life?
Speaker 1:I have sat with this question. I have honestly come up with so many different things. To me, the meaning of life after everything I've gone through if you'd asked me this when I was 29, it would have been a very different answer to me it's trying to improve what we have for the next lot and I don't think we're doing it very well at the moment with everything that's going on in the world. But we have the power to make life better for the next people that go through life and it's a real, like world peace. It's not about world peace. It's about work life balance. It's about all these little things that we can make changes to while we're here to help it be more fun and more enjoyable for the next lot that come through.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's a lovely meaning of life, and I don't think it's about like recycling or you know what I mean. I just mean the general experience of life. There's a lot of things that are really hard for people, especially work-life balance. My God, like I just think we're almost living to work a lot of the time and going to climb the scalp with your seven-year-old on a random morning morning, 10 minutes before school, is worth more than anything that's the things that they remember as well.
Speaker 2:I went to jump stone with mine the other day, took my pelvic floor into my own hands. Tell you that was some experience. But I agree with you, yeah, I try and find the little moments with my kids like that too yeah, because it's so busy.
Speaker 2:Just pass you by, and you know what I was actually. I was getting my eyebrows done the other day and the lady that was doing it said do you? So obviously my kids are teenagers now and her kids are that bit older too. She goes there was a lady in here the other day and she's paying €1,700 on a crash.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I well believe it I mean, how much money do you have to be fucking earning a month to be able to pay, to work, your taxed income to work, to actually go to work? This, it's great, and I'm not this is no shade on the crashes, because I know they have to- pay their staff and I know there's some rules and regulations, but the country is broken.
Speaker 1:The parents are broken.
Speaker 2:I remember paying crash fees and I pay crash fees, but also my parents were able to help me out and my mother-in-law was able to help me out as well, sometimes as well sometimes.
Speaker 1:So there was never three in the crash at the one time and we're lucky in that sense as well, because there's so big gaps between all the kids, but it's actually unfair to expect it of our older parents as well that they will do that like some older, so it's just. And then there's the attitude of, well, you chose to have kids. I'm like, alright, we'll all stop having kids.
Speaker 2:That's a podcast in and of itself actually. I think, I need to get someone on to have a good old bitch about the you should and it's not a bitch, it's more of like how do we fix it? Fix it or try to make it's terrible for parents.
Speaker 1:So we're going through this and we've had our shit times with house prices and whatever. Our parents went through it in the 80s as well to make life more enjoyable for our kids and their kids and their kids.
Speaker 1:Like the work-life balance. The nine to five needs to go. It's the biggest load of bullshit. Nobody needs to sit behind a desk from nine to five every day. There needs to be more flexi time. There needs to be more time where you're not made feel guilty for wanting to go to your kids I don't know nativity play or their sports day, or or you shouldn't have that panicky feeling of like, oh my God, you know what if my manager thinks I'm dossing, like they're just, I don't know. I'm all for that. That's a whole other podcast. But yeah, I'm very much of the flex appeal. She came over last week, didn't she?
Speaker 2:Motherpucka, yeah, like her. There's no stopping her in that one.
Speaker 1:I tell you she's good. Fair play to from the rooftop. But the Irish thing is to be like, oh, look at you, you lazy bitch. You don't want to work. I'm like, well, if I actually got to spend time with my kids more than work, yeah, okay, fair enough, I don't want to work, I want to spend time with my kids.
Speaker 2:I think if it was to be thought about properly, it could be done well. Where you could, you'd have the option of working if you wanted to cost. We have to go now. Thanks million. Thank you so much.
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