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Double tragedy


has made Rhian twice as strong


After watching her tiny infant son die in hospital, Rhian Burke felt sure life could never get any worse. But four days later it did. Chris Thundow reports.


A


s she lay on the hospital bed, in the silence of the ward, Rhian


Burke held the body of her son and listened for the breaths she knew


would never come. She cradled his tiny frame - still warm and


swaddled in blankets - and knew, for the first time in her life, what real loss was. Though he was barely a year old, George had been a boy full of life, wriggling along the floor at home and gurgling with pleasure in his mother’s arms. Now, though, he was silent, his eyes closed, and in this moment, as she held George’s body for the last time, Rhian realised - really realised - that her son was dead, that he would never move or make a noise again. It was a moment of grief then unrivalled in


her life and in the lives of many of the people she knew. But only four days later she would feel it again, differently, more savagely. Only four days after her son George died


unexpectedly, Rhian’s husband Paul left the couple’s house in South Wales and never came home. He had plunged to his death from a motorway bridge. How do you even begin to cope with these


things? “I think a lot of people imagine that it is really


hard at first and then slowly, day by day, it gets easier,” says Rhian. “But it’s not as simple as that. There are days


Farewell Magazine 05


I feel normal and there are days, even now, 20 months on, that I can barely take it.”


And perhaps it is the tone in the 35-year-old’s


voice, perhaps it is the way she so readily gives the monthly tally but, either way, it is clear that she is telling the absolute truth. Just two years ago, though, everything was


completely different. With her husband Paul, the man she had


loved for 14 years, she had three children, one now four, one now five and tiny George, then


just past his first birthday. At their home in Miskin, near Cardiff, they


were living the life they had always wanted. And in February last year, Rhian came home from her job as a PE teacher and bathed her children and everything changed. She says: “I was with George and he was


crawling around on the floor and he just went limp. I picked him up and he was a dead weight. “He was such a lively baby, I knew something was really wrong and then he started convulsing,


Main picture: ANGELS by Infinity Nano@flickr


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