Northamptonshire mum's podcast shows ‘the reality of grief' following the death of her teenage son

The youngest of her four children, Bradley, had been diagnosed with Stage 4 Diffuse Midline Glioma on the pons area of his brain stem – in less than a year he had died aged 18.

A year on, Rebecca has launched ‘Room to Grieve’, a podcast with fellow bereaved mum Karen Kinsella, to delve into the raw experiences of living life after the devastating loss of their children.

Rebecca said: “A week after Bradley died, I did feel devastated, but I also found myself laughing and joking. It felt wrong, all wrong. Grief was not what I expected it to be.

"Grief is so physical. I expected to never get out of bed and never shower, but it’s never been like that. Laughing felt wrong and I’d get horrendous guilt – ‘I haven’t fallen into a pit, what’s wrong with me?’ Grief feels like you’ve been hit by a bus and got Covid all at the same time.”

Just after Bradley had died, Rebecca deep in grief, went to the Co-op in Oundle for groceries and looked at the other customers in the shop.

She said: “I thought ‘none of you know Bradley has died’ and then I wondered how many more of you are going through what I’m going through – grief.

"Nobody told me to avoid the supermarket but I went round thinking Bradley would have liked that. I felt winded. We still have cereal in the cupboard that only he liked. I’m not throwing that away yet.

"We have become a culture which is trying to avoid death, but we are all going to die. We want to open up those conversations and normalise death a bit more.”

Radiotherapy treatment had given the family of six extra time together ‘to make memories’ but as Bradley’s health declined Rebecca fought against medics’ seeming unwillingness to intervene to help him fight infections. Several times she was told it would be kinder to ‘let him die’.

She said: “He was just a statistic. They (doctors) had become too desensitised. One time a nurse said it sounds like he’s caught sepsis and said ‘wouldn’t it be kinder to let him die’. It was all over his file he had been taken home to die but he was sitting up in bed making Lego. By the end of April (2023) Brad hadn’t slept for three weeks. He was too scared to close his eyes in case he died. “He was so well aware that nobody was caring for him.”

To raise spirits, the family converted their living room into a ‘pub’ complete with pool table so Bradley could socialise with his friends at his own pace.

It was when Bradley’s mobility dramatically declined, the family tried to get help from charities. Eventually Rebecca was helped to find a bed at the Sue Ryder Hospice in Peterborough after crisis intervention by the Teenage Cancer Trust, Kettering’s Cransley Hospice and Derian House Hospice in Chorley.

She said: “I knew Bradley was going to die, and if it wasn’t for Derian House we wouldn’t have got him the care he needed. We had 20 people a day in his room. The hospice staff created a spa day for Bradley with reiki healing and massages. They really took their time to make it special.”

Bradley died of pneumonia on June 1, 2023.

Rebecca said: “It was a really tough time. He trusted me implicitly. I told him we would keep him alive. When he died it was just weird. Before he died you try to prepare yourself to what it’s going to look like.

"There are so many nuances – not doing his washing, at Christmas I said to Simon, Bradley’s dad, I haven’t got the kids selection boxes and picked up four.”

Sat on the family’s drive is Bradley’s ‘dream car’ that he never got to drive or see with its new colour scheme. He had been due to start an apprenticeship as a paint sprayer but never got to take his driving test due to his illness.

Rebecca said: “He bought the car to do up out of his savings. It was blue and we got it sprayed red. The day he died he was supposed to see the car, but he died at 3am. The time it would have visited, he was leaving the hospice in a hearse.”

With the first year of ‘milestone’ dates over, Rebecca says she’s finding the second year even harder but the podcast helps her.

She said: “The podcast is like a therapy session. It’s what just comes out of our mouths. A lot of our listeners are ‘non-grievers’. There are some sad episodes but one minute we’re crying, the next we are laughing. What we want is to educate. The worst thing for me is the ‘at least’ – at least you have three other children, at least he knew how much he was loved – it doesn’t make up for him being not here.”

Rebecca and Karen hope to set up the BE Forever charity to help others with bereavement education.

She said: “There’s so much literature about birth but not death. We want to go into schools and talk about loss and bereavement when a person is going through that. It the whole mental health issue.”

She added: “People around you don’t know what to say but I don’t think there’s any right or wrong thing to say to someone who is bereaved – just say something.”

Room to Grieve is free to listen to and can be found on Spotify, YouTube, and audible.