Episode 27: Finally Having Answers

For almost two years, I've avoided answering one question: How did Alex die?

This week, after a long awaited inquest, I finally have the answers. 

This isn't just a story about loss, it's about trusting your instincts, fighting for the people you love, and finding peace in finally knowing.

If you've ever lived in the uncertainty of grief or searched for answers after losing someone, I hope this episode reminds you that you are not alone ☕️🖤

Transcript

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Hello and welcome back to the Early Morning Coffee Club, the podcast where grief is intense, humour is finely ground, and strength sneaks up on you like a double shot. Before we begin, I just want to give a very special shout-out to my wonderful friend Hannah and wish her a very happy birthday. Hanna is officially the number one fan of this podcast. She listens religiously every single week, and she always sends me the loveliest message afterwards, which actually means more than she probably realizes. So it only feels right to use this opportunity to say happy birthday, Han. I hope you have the most amazing day. Thank you for always supporting me, cheering me on, and being such an incredible friend. I love you. Now, this week's episode is actually probably one of the hardest I've had to record. Not because I'm emotional, well, I'm always emotional, but because I'm finally ready to tell you something that I haven't shared publicly before. About how Alex died. For almost two years I've avoided that conversation. Now some people have noticed, some people have asked, some people have actually just assumed. And every single time I've changed the subject or given the shortest answer possible. Not because I wanted to keep secrets, but because I genuinely didn't know how to answer. It's funny really, isn't it? When someone tells you they've lost someone they love, one of the very first questions people ask is, how did they die? I don't think people ask because they're trying to be cruel. I think we're just wired to want answers, to make sense of something that feels impossible. But when you're the person who's grieving, that question can feel enormous because sometimes there isn't a simple answer. Sometimes the answer is still unfolding. Sometimes you just don't know. And for almost two years I didn't. I remember one day being out with my lovely friend Cy when a man came over to me and started chatting me up. Now this guy was really not picking up on the signals that I was absolutely not interested, but he continued anyway. Until halfway through he noticed Cy standing next to me and went, Oh, sorry, mate, is this your missus? Cy and I just looked at each other. There was this awkward pause where we were both silently trying to work out who was going to answer and how they were going to answer. And naturally I chose chaos. I said No, he's my dead husband's best friend. The poor bloke looked like his soul briefly left his body. But then without missing a beat, he said, Oh shit, how did he die? And honestly, I nearly rolled my eyes into another postcode, because there it was, the question, the one that everyone asks. The truthful answer wasn't a sentence, it wasn't even a paragraph. It was an hour long story, hospitals, questions, investigations, waiting, so much uncertainty. So, instead I smiled and said Do you know that's actually the least interesting thing about him? Why don't you ask me what his name was? What his favourite food was, what he was like as a person, what made me fall in love with him? Because isn't that so much more interesting than the final few hours of someone's life? There was a pause. And then this absolute bell end looked at me and said Oh, so it was cancer then? I mean for fuck's sake, some conversations really do make you lose faith in humanity. And I went home feeling frustrated all over again, because every time someone asked me, it opened a wound that I couldn't close. So here's what I used to tell people that on Boxing Day, 2024, Alex was admitted to hospital with the flu. A few hours later he died. And even saying those words out loud still feels surreal. The flu. It sounds impossible. People would look at me waiting for the rest of the sentence, as though I'd forgotten to include the important bit. Because healthy thirty four year old men aren't supposed to die from the flu. I knew that, they knew that, which meant the question started almost immediately. But how? But why? What happened? And I didn't have the answers. The irony is, Alex would have absolutely hated that being the headline. His favourite TV programme was Peep Show, and if you've ever watched it, you'll know the character Gerard, who, I think if I remember correctly, dies after getting the flu. And I can honestly hear Alex's voice now. Don't you dare compare me to Gerard. He'd be absolutely fuming. This was the man who threw himself out of aeroplanes, who snowboarded off beast, who rode motorbikes, who surfed massive waves, who'd happily do anything involving a bit of adrenaline and a questionable level of risk, and somehow his story became he died from the flu. I can almost picture him rolling his eyes and saying, Seriously, that's the ending I get? At least call it influenza, that sounds way better. Trust me, if anyone deserved a more on brand exit, it was Alex. Which is exactly why I knew there had to be more to the story. So when the coroner called me the day after Alex died and told me that they were classing his death as natural causes and there would be no postmortem, something in me just knew that wasn't right. Despite feeling like I was drowning in grief, I found a tiny bit of strength that I didn't know I had, and I told her, no, I don't accept this decision. I asked how I could request a postmortem. She told me that I would need to write to the coroner and explain why I was asking for a postmortem. So less than twenty four hours after losing my husband, I sat at my laptop through a blur of tears and wrote one of the most important emails of my life. I wasn't a lawyer, I wasn't a doctor. I was just a wife whose husband had gone into hospital with the flu and died. I remember typing furiously through tears, practically begging them to look deeper because none of it made any sense. And thankfully, whatever I wrote on that email, they agreed. And at the time I thought that was the end of the fight. But in reality, it was only just the beginning. What followed was 18 months of waiting, investigations, meetings with the hospital, referrals for genetic testing, one referral being cancelled, then referred all over again, countless phone calls, countless emails, meetings with solicitors and barristers, and eventually an inquest, which took place on Tuesday last week. Every time I thought we were getting closer to answers, another delay appeared. Another form, another appointment, another few months of waiting, and when you're grieving, life already feels like it's standing still. I wasn't looking for someone to blame, I wasn't looking for a courtroom drama, I just wanted to know what happened to my husband. Because when someone you love dies that suddenly, your brain refuses to stop asking why. And this week, after almost two years, I finally got some answers. Not that having answers changes anything, of course. Nothing changes what happened, nothing brings Alex back. But when someone you love dies so suddenly, your brain keeps trying to solve the puzzle. You replay everything, you wonder if something was missed, if something could have been different, if someone made a mistake, if you made a mistake, and you become trapped in the endless what ifs. People sometimes think an inquest is about blame. For me, it wasn't. It was about truth. I lost my husband, Oscar lost his daddy, and yet everyone else's life's carried on. Doctors move on to the next patient, hospitals carry on, the world keeps spinning, and you're left standing in the wreckage asking what the hell happened. Now I'm not going to go into every medical detail today. Some of that still feels very personal, and some of it I'm still processing. But I finally know what happened, and I cannot tell you the relief that comes with replacing uncertainty with certainty, even when the truth hurts. Because uncertainty has a way of keeping grief frozen. Every unanswered question becomes another thing your mind revisits at three o'clock in the morning. And now those questions have somewhere to rest. So on Tuesday last week, at the end of a very long day, I sat across from the coroner as she gave her conclusion. And then something happened that I don't think I will ever forget. She stopped being just the coroner. She spoke to me human to human, mother to mother, wife to wife, and through my tears and through hers, she told me that Alex died from myocarditis caused by influenza, and that earlier intervention at the hospital could possibly have saved him. And those words hit me like a train, because for the first time in almost two years the story finally started to make sense. Afterwards the coroner's clerk quietly told me that in all her years working with that coroner, she'd very rarely seen her become emotional during an inquest. And that stayed with me. Because in that moment I didn't feel like another case number. I felt seen, heard, like somebody truly understood the enormity of what had happened. And then there was something else. This whole journey started because I refused to accept that Alex had simply died from the flu. People kept telling me, the paperwork said it. But every instinct in me said there had to be more. That's why I pushed for the postmortem. That's why I kept asking questions. That's why I fought for the inquest. And now almost two years later, there it was. Myocarditis caused by influenza. Those words are now on his death certificate. It doesn't change what happened, it doesn't make losing him any easier, but it tells the truth. And that mattered more to me than I can explain. The biggest surprise, though, was the feeling that followed. Relief. It almost feels wrong to say that out loud after your husband's inquest. Relief sounds like such an odd emotion to sit alongside grief. But it was relief because I'd spent nearly two years carrying the weight of unanswered questions, wondering whether I was imagining that something didn't add up. I wasn't. My instincts were right. There was more to the story. Those words won't bring him home, but they finally allowed my mind to stop searching for answers it was never going to find on its own. Oscar. One day you'll probably listen to this episode when you're old enough to understand what an inquest is. I hope by then that this week feels like a distant chapter in our story. After nearly two years, we finally got some answers about how your dad died. And for a long time I fought to find those answers. Not because I thought they would bring him back, but because I wanted the truth. I wanted to know that I'd done everything I possibly could for him and for you. And now I know there was more to the story. Your daddy should not have died. Those are heartbreaking words to hear, but strangely, they also bring me some peace. They quietened all the questions that had been spinning around in my head for so long. I want you to know something though. None of this changes who your dad was. He wasn't defined by the way he died, he was defined by the way he lived. He was adventurous, kind, funny, stubborn, and endlessly curious. He laughed loudly, loved deeply, and made everyone around him feel welcome. He adored you from the moment he knew you existed. His greatest adventure wasn't jumping out of airplanes or surfing huge waves, it was becoming your dad. And if there's one thing I hope you take away from this episode, it's that asking questions is okay. Trusting your instincts is okay. And fighting for the people you love is always worth it. I couldn't save your dad, and that will always break my heart, but I hope one day you'll know that I never stopped fighting for him. Not on the day he died, not in the months or years that followed, and not for a single day since. And I hope that makes you proud, because I know it would make your dad proud too. The strange thing is having answers hasn't made me miss Alex any less. It hasn't made me cry any less. It hasn't made me wish he was here any less. Grief doesn't work like that. Answers don't heal a broken heart, but they do quiet a mind that's been searching. And I think that's why I'm finally able to tell you. For two years I wasn't keeping a story from you, I was waiting for someone to tell me what the story actually was. And now I know. So if you're listening to this while waiting for answers of your own, whether that's after losing someone or after any life-changing event, I know how exhausting that waiting can be. I know how much energy it takes, I know how lonely it feels, and I hope you get your answers. Because even if they don't bring peace, they can bring clarity, and sometimes clarity is enough to let you take your next breath. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. I'm sorry you're here, but I'm glad we're here together. I'll see you next week.