“He Went to Football and Never Came Home” | Louise Liddell

Content warning: death, sudden bereavement, traumatic injury, ICU, children’s grief and legal proceedings. When Louise Liddell’s husband John cycled off to play five-a-side football one evening, there was no reason to think he wouldn’t be coming home. But later that night, Louise was woken by flashing lights and a knock at the door. John had been hit by a bus while cycling home and had suffered catastrophic brain injuries. In this episode of Widowed AF, Louise joins Rosie to talk about the 18 extraordinary days that followed, the limbo of ICU, being told John had died at the roadside and been brought back, and the impossible reality of trying to prepare their two young boys for the possibility that their dad wasn’t going to survive. But this is also a story about the life that came before. Louise shares how she and John met on a 2:10am train, how a 12-minute journey turned into a life together, and the decade they spent growing up alongside one another before becoming parents. She remembers John as the content one, the hands-on dad who rearranged his working life around school runs, football and family, and the enormous hole his death left behind. Louise and Rosie talk candidly about taking children into ICU, the very different ways children process trauma and grief, withdrawing life support and the days of waiting that followed. And then there is everything that comes after a sudden death like John’s. Louise describes the police investigations, press intrusion, CPS decisions, coroner’s court and civil proceedings that repeatedly pulled her back into the circumstances of John’s death. She also talks about challenging language she felt blamed John, her fight for accountability and how she has channelled some of her anger into campaigning for road safety. This is a conversation about traumatic loss, but also about love, parenting, anger, injustice and what it means to begin living again when the life you knew changed in a single night.