A grieving mum has shared a heartbreaking post on social media, that has an incredibly important message beneath the tragic story of losing her two children, who were killed by a drunk driver in a road accident.
Sarah Jane Pascoe-Hudson’s Facebook post has touched peoples’ hearts as she urges people to be careful and to not drink drive, as it has left her with a “lifetime of sorrow”, along with so many other families.
The mum shared a photo on Facebook of herself with her three children, Peter (two-years-old), and his older siblings Matthew, 12, and Lucy, 10. In the post, she describes her children as “my world, my joy, my life”.
This photograph shows me with my beautiful children ~ Matthew 12, Lucy 10 and their little brother Peter 2. My world, my…
Posted by Sarah Jane Pascoe-Hudson on Thursday, 14 November 2019
Sarah states she thinks the post was taken approximately two weeks before Matthew and Lucy were killed by a drunk driver. “They went to a football match with their dad one summer evening in July 1996, and never came home,” the post reads.
“The drunk driver hit the car they were in head-on. Matthew died instantly, and Lucy 3 hours later in surgery. Their friend Ben, died 6 days later in hospital. Their father was horribly injured but survived the accident… well, physically anyway, as memories never die. The drunk driver was pronounced dead at the scene. My mum always said that he got away lightly.”
The post continued to read: “In the few seconds that it took to veer off his side of the road, that drunk driver smashed our world into tiny pieces. Little brother Peter’s grief and confusion regarding his siblings ‘disappearance’ was immense. You can only tell a 2-year-old the very basics, but the fact that he stopped talking for weeks, and carried around for months a little car that Matthew had given him that day, often watching and waiting at the window, told of his pain.
“The next time I saw my dear, beautiful children was in 2 coffins side by side in the Chapel of Rest. The shock took away my ability to stand. How we managed to get through the funeral I will never know, but the many friends, family, and school children that attended helped to give us strength.
“The inquest 5 months later told of a wealthy, upstanding Plymouth businessman, who was generous towards charities with his time and money, but who had a longstanding penchant for drinking and driving, ignoring all warnings regarding the danger he was causing. He was 3.5 times over the drink driving limit when he got in his car. If only someone had taken his keys away that night…
“Life became very quiet, all the energy was sucked out of the house where once my children had laughed and lived. I held tight to my sanity only for my little boy, and we grieved together, and in our own way.”
Sarah shared through the post that it wasn’t until many years later that her son Peter, now aged 15, “finally found peace” through reading newspaper articles about the accident.
In the post, Sarah also mentioned that it would have been Lucy’s 34th birthday. Sarah wrote: “Through the tears that will inevitably flow, I will smile at her memories and tell her how much she is loved. It is all I can do.”
The end of the grieving mother’s post stated an incredibly important message: “Please do not put another family through this grief. Please do not be the cause of a lifetime of sorrow. AND DON’T BE STUPID ENOUGH TO THINK IT WON’T HAPPEN TO YOU. It happened to us. It happened to my beautiful children. It can happen to anyone.
“Designate a driver, take a taxi, walk to the party.”
Currently, Sarah’s post has been shared over 151,000 times.
So, when driving about this Christmas take this story into consideration if you’re thinking about having a drink or two.
