Father's Day for children without their dad

Published on Friday 19 June 2009 10:04

IT WAS 7am on a crisp winter's morning and Yvette Brough had just pulled herself out of bed to wave her husband off on a pheasant shooting outing.

Ewan, 41, kissed his wife goodbye and cheekily slapped her bum before setting off with his friends and his brother, Hamish, to Ferrygate in North Berwick, on what had become a monthly pastime.

But the father-of-one didn't return home that Saturday evening in 2005. The next time Yvette saw her husband, he was lying dead in a morgue.

Ewan suffered a massive heart attack in the woods that morning, leaving Yvette a widow – and a single mum – at the age of 33.

The couple had spent the week collecting seven tons of rice from schools across the Borders for the Asian tsunami victims, and Yvette was on her way home from packing the rice when her friend told her the devastating news.

Yvette, 37, explains: "I was just crying hysterically on the street. I screamed to the point that people were coming out of their house to see if everything was OK. It was just a massive shock."

Yvette would usually accompany Ewan, pictured right, and their five-year-old son Tomas, on the outings, but for the first time in years she – and Tomas – had decided to stay at home in Peebles.

She adds: "I had to sit Tomas down and tell him that his daddy had died, but he didn't really know what that meant.

"It was a big culture shock becoming a single mother and trying to bring up Tomas on my own."

A photo album decorated with love hearts sits on top of the television in Yvette's home in Newington, filled with photographs of the couple's wedding day in April 1999. A photograph of Ewan, with Tomas as a baby nestling into his daddy's short grey beard, decorates the wall, and several family photos are framed on top of the fireplace.

Yvette has a twinkle in her eye when she reflects on the memories she shared with Ewan, but is still overcome with grief when she thinks back to that day.

Her sorrow is unimaginable to anyone who has not experienced the same trauma, but, of course, she is far from alone.

There are 13,566 widowed men and women under 50 in Scotland, many of whom have had to become both mother and father to their children and who are left to deal with once-happy occasions such as Father's Day – and Mother's Day – alone.

"It's really difficult because we know Father's Day is coming but you try and block it out a bit," Yvette explains. "You walk around the shops and you want to be able to buy something, but there's no-one to buy it for."

Linsay Black, 49, who lost her husband Douglas to bowel cancer in August 2006, shares Yvette's anguish.

Linsay was only 46 when her husband died aged 47, leaving her to look after their then four-year-old daughter Chloe. She started St Margaret's School in Newington two weeks after her dad died.

Linsay recalls the day in June 2005 when the doctor at Spire Murrayfield Hospital informed the couple that the cancer was terminal, and had spread to Douglas's liver.

She recalls: "I just burst into tears and then I thought 'I must stop crying because I have got to be strong for Douglas and support him'. He was quite stunned."

She adds: "If you can, you have got to just try and make the most of the time that you have got."

Linsay was forced to watch her husband become a shadow of his former self as the disease cruelly took hold, despite a gruelling five-month batch of chemotherapy.

However, it wasn't until the final two months of his life that Douglas became seriously ill. Up until then the corporate lawyer was able to enjoy a trip to Disneyland Paris and many fun times playing with Chloe in the garden.

Linsay smiles: "When Chloe talks about her memories of Douglas, she says her daddy was funny and made her laugh, which is a lot better than remembering him lying in a bed being ill."

Douglas continued working for his company, Black Harrow Business Law in the West End of Edinburgh, until April 2006 – four months before he died. However, by June, his legs had swollen up so much due to liver failure that he couldn't leave the house.

Linsay says: "It was really heartbreaking, and he was very conscious of Chloe seeing him like that. He had a strong will not to let it show as much as he could."

Douglas slipped into a coma at the family home, which was in Duddingston, and he was taken to St Columba's Hospice. He never regained consciousness, dying 14 months after his diagnosis.

"When I told Chloe her daddy had died, she burst into tears and five minutes later she said – 'can I have a rabbit then?'" Linsay says. "But she understood that he wasn't coming back and she still gets upset sometimes."

Linsay then made the painful decision to leave her house to start a new life in Newington in April 2007. "It was difficult because that was the house where we lived when we got married, where we brought Chloe back from the hospital when she was born, and it was the last connection with Douglas," she adds tearfully.

Despite moving house, Chloe has shown that her dad is still in her thoughts by buying him a Christmas present and making him a birthday card every year.

Linsay adds: "Chloe's first day at school was really hard. She was in her uniform and all the other mums and dads were bringing their children to school for the first time, so I had quite a bubble.

"Every year on the first day of school I still cry after I've dropped Chloe off, I cry at every nativity play – Douglas only saw her nursery one – and every parent/teacher meeting. When she gets a good school report, although there are people to tell, it's not the same."

Yvette and Linsay met through a national charity called the WAY Foundation – the only UK charity supporting men and women bereaved under the age of 50.

Linsay is the charity's press officer and area co-ordinator of the Edinburgh branch, and says it has helped to go on outings with others in the same position.

While Linsay plans to begin a part-time counselling course at the University of Edinburgh in September, with the aim of becoming a bereavement councillor, Yvette will start her final year at Napier University, where she is studying for an honours degree in architectural technology.

Yvette says: "The first few mon-ths after Ewan died were horrendous. I think I spent the first two months wearing his clothes.

"I don't know how I coped. You do what any mother would do and live for your child. That first year, if I didn't have Tomas, I wouldn't be here. I try to be strong for Tomas but some days I just sit on the toilet and cry my eyes out."

She adds: "Tomas and I lost our entire existence and everything has changed. That boy that wanted to hunt and shoot and fish doesn't exist any more because I can't teach him to do these things."

Yvette and Tomas moved to West Mayfield in Edinburgh in November 2007 after their cottage in Peebles became run down.

Tomas, nine, who is now in primary four at Sciennes Primary, had to repeat primary one at his former school in Peebles after the strain of losing his father took its toll.

He, too, still gets upset at times, and often talks about "how great his dad was".

Yvette had continued running the couple's landscaping company, Kerbology, following Ewan's death, but decided to gave up the business and start university after she collapsed with exhaustion.

Yvette, who is originally from Queensland, Australia, met Ewan while working as a restaurant manager at a hotel in Peebles in October 1997.

She adds: "After Ewan died, there was a survival instinct that kicked in, and instead of dwelling on grief, I began to think about how the hell I was going to cope."