June Thomas’ son Jack died on February 12, 2012. Although the family have no confirmed cause of his death it is believed to be associated with a possible arrhythmia. She talks to Angharad Williams about that day, the anniversary of his death and how Jack is helping save lives after his death. 

“Jack was your typical teenager. He was very sporty, he was very intelligent, had a messy room sometimes, he was a typical boy. He was loving and always looked out for people.

On that day we were all at home and I was getting ready because Jack’s younger brother Owain was playing rugby for Blackwood, and Wales and Scotland were due to play in the Six Nations.

I was in my bedroom doing my hair and I can still picture Jack now, he was lying on my bed. I asked him if the back of my hair straight and he said ‘Yeah’.

Whitney Houston had passed away the day before and there was a tribute to her on TV. I said ‘Whitney Houston has died, has she?’ and he said, ‘No mam, they are doing it for no reason’. He was always taking the mick out of me.

I went downstairs and I remember I wanted a small jacket, I didn’t want a big coat, so I shouted to Jack ‘Can I borrow your jacket?’. He said ‘Of course you can’. Then I said ‘love you’ and he said ‘love you, see you later.’

My husband Grant took us down to the rugby club and I watched Owain play, and then stayed to watch the Wales and Scotland match.

It was 3.50pm and half time in the Wales game when I looked at my phone and could see Emily, Jack’s girlfriend, had been ringing me. I thought that’s a bit strange, so I rang her back and her mum answered. She said ‘I think Jack has had a fit.’ I said ‘What do you mean? Is he breathing?’ and she said ‘They’re trying June’.

I came back into the bar really upset and shouted ‘I need to get to Newbridge.’ One of the mums hadn’t been drinking so she took me.

When we got to the house I could see an ambulance and a first responder there and I ran inside. I went into the living room and saw Jack on a chair with a tube in his mouth.

Grant went in the ambulance with Jack and we followed behind in the car.

We got to the Royal Gwent Hospital and a nurse told us ‘We are doing everything we can’. I said, ‘I need to get in there because if he’s going to listen to anyone then he’ll listen to me’.

They agreed for me to come in. It was like panic stations. They were doing CPR on him, the doctors were putting drugs into him, they were checking the monitors and I was by him shouting ‘Come on Jack, prove them wrong’, because he always liked to prove people wrong.

They sent for a cardiologist, I remember he came down and scanned his heart and he said Jack was gone. There wasn’t a dry eye in there. I was a mess, and these people who had obviously never met my boy before were all in tears too. They did everything they could to help him.

I can remember they took Jack into another room and then we had to tell his brother Owain.

He came to the hospital with Grant’s parents. He came in the room where Jack was and he kissed his brother. He took his cardigan off to put on him because Jack’s chest was bare.

We all came home then and we had friends here. Everyone was in shock. We were told that all Jack’s friends were at Oakdale Square. Grant and Owain went there and they came back with floods of teenagers.

A couple of hours later someone called and said ‘You won’t believe how many people were at the Square’, and they said everyone started singing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ because Jack supported Liverpool.

We are still waiting for answers. We still don’t know why Jack died. They could find nothing wrong with him. We had intensive post-mortem done on him and they found nothing.

The coroner stated it was death by natural causes, with a possibility it could have been an arrhythmia.

His DNA is up in St George’s Hospital in London and is part of a research programme to see if they can find anything out through genetics. We are hoping they will find something.

We have all had a number of tests and everything came back negative. Owain gets checked twice a year, and I also get checked.

When Jack died we asked the question ‘Is this going to happen to Owain?’. We were told ‘We don’t know because we don’t know what happened to Jack’. We are living with that all the time.

We went to the Welsh Assembly 11 weeks after Jack passed to promote an annual screening program for young people.

Someone told us about Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY).

I realised there wasn’t anything near us to test youngsters, so I contacted CRY and said I wanted to bring something here.

We created a memorial fund and raised money for a screening in Oakdale Comprehensive School.

We picked up a couple of people with defects.

We did one in June 2016 and screened 95 young people. There were 14 referrals from that and we recently did one on February 11 where we screened 111 people and had a further two referrals.

Then I thought about the lack of heart defibrillators around.

I was put in touch with Sharon Owen at Welsh Hearts and set up Jack’s Appeal with them.

We fundraise to put defibrillators in schools. The Welsh Hearts team then go along and train everybody to use them. We now have defibrillators in all the secondary schools in Gwent and in 13 primary schools.

We gave one of the defibrillators to Blackwood Comprehensive School and 11 months later it saved a mum’s life.

She suffered a cardiac arrest and if the defibrillator hadn’t been there she wouldn’t be alive.

I’d like to see them all over Wales.

Phill Hill is working on passing Jack’s Law, which would make defibrillators available in every public place in Wales.

Jack was too good to die and to be forgotten about. The anniversary of his death was on February 12 so I found that very, very hard.

People says it gets easier with time, but I disagree.

You learn to get through each day. I don’t think it will ever get easier.

My family have been a fantastic support.

Every fundraiser, our friends and other members of the community are there. People do bike races and running in the sea to fundraise, amongst other things, in Jack’s memory. It’s just fantastic.

Owain is wonderful. He was 12 when he lost his brother. He just keeps us going.

I always say; In 2012, the world came crumbling down on me, and the hands of a 12-year-old pulled me out of the rubble.

Jack always used to say this year was our big year because I’m 50 on March 14, Owain is 18 on March 30 and Jack would have been 21 on June 6.

Welsh Hearts are organising a black-tie ball at the Maes Manor in Blackwood on June 9 to mark his birthday.

I wanted it there because that’s where his prom would have been, so I thought it would be nice.

In the December before Jack died he came home and said ‘When you die you can be made into a diamond’. He said he learnt it in science.

He said ‘That’s what I want to be’ and we laughed it off. After he died I had Jack’s ashes made into a blue diamond because his eyes were blue. We sent his ashes to Chicago and I have had the diamond mounted into a ring which I wear as my engagement ring.

When I heard that I had been awarded a British Empire Medal I was shocked.

First of all I thought ‘I haven’t done anything’, because I don’t see that I have.

At the end of the day I just set up Cry in the Valleys with CRY, and Jack’s Appeal with Welsh Hearts to keep Jack’s memory alive.

I don’t want anyone else to go through the trauma of losing a child that we are still living through.

Even when we lost him we never dreamed of doing all the things we have done.

This medal is not for me, it’s for Jack.

The medal is not just mine, it’s Grant’s; it’s Owain’s; it is the family. We are all one unit.”

To find out more about events in Jack’s memory and Jack’s Law visit www.facebook.com/RememberingJackThomas.