In the summer of 2020, Micah was 19 and destined for university. While practising his cooking skills one evening in preparation for leaving home for the first time, he suffered a fatal dissection. He had undiagnosed Marfan syndrome. Micah's mother Natasha has since been raising funds and awareness for the Trust and will be running the Paris Marathon this April.
by Natasha
My name is Natasha. My son, Micah, died suddenly and unexpectedly on July 23rd 2020. He was 19 years old, fit and healthy, he had no medical problems that I was aware of. It’s hard to put in words what Micah was like, to me as his mum he was a bright, chatty, kind, thoughtful, clever, active, friendly, lovely child who grew up to be an amazing young man with the world at his feet. It wasn’t until he died that I discovered so many other people felt the same way about him. I found out he was truly loved because of the amazing person he was inside and out.
After he died, the love of his friends slowly became a comfort for me. I’ve come to care deeply for some of his friends because they are just as amazing as Micah was and I know they will always hold a special place for him in their hearts and will keep his memory alive and that for a mother who has lost her child is so so very important, both heartbreaking and heart-warming.
The night Micah died it was the second day of the summer holidays. He was at home cooking dinner for his girlfriend. My daughter and I were having dinner at a local restaurant with friends when I got a phone call from Micah’s phone, it was his girlfriend telling me to get home asap, I could hear she was in tears and frantic. I could also hear a female voice telling her how to CPR. I remember I just kept saying “don’t stop, please don’t stop”. It took me about 40 minutes to get home, in the end a waiter from the restaurant took me home, I think because I was on my knees in the car park screaming. I just left my daughter with our friends. I got home to find a paramedic doing CPR, during the next few minutes more paramedics arrived and the HEMS helicopter landed nearby and two/three more emergency responders arrived. There were also quite a few police officers.
I wasn’t allowed in his room to see him, I just had to watch strangers coming and going not telling me anything and listen to them upstairs talking to each other, sometime later the clinician in charge came down and told me there was nothing else they could do, Micah was dead. My memory goes a bit blurry then but I do remember his dad arriving, I had to tell him his son had died. Just after that my daughter came back and I vividly remember sitting her on my lap and telling her brother had died, the noise she made will stay with me forever!. The next few weeks are very hazy, I wasn’t eating or sleeping, there are no words to describe how I felt, empty doesn’t come close, I was alive but not alive, disbelief and darkness.
