Meet our Representatives - Linda and Geoff Goodwin

On Saturday 21 July 2007, our eldest son, Tony, contacted us to say that our daughter-in-law, Rachel, had been trying to reach us by telephone.

Rachel’s husband and our younger son, Ashley, had suffered a heart attack and was in Frenchay Hospital, Bristol.

It was inexplicable to us at the time, as he had just undertaken rigorous physical exercise as part of his police training and had run two London Marathons in the previous two years.

We drove down to Bristol as quickly as possible and I for one fully expected to see him “wired up” and attached to monitors. It was only the evening before that we had spoken to him to wish him a happy birthday and an enjoyable evening at home with his family.

On arrival at the hospital we quickly became aware that all was not well, and found out that Ashley had died suddenly at home without warning. He was sitting on the sofa, writing up notes following a placement during the week before, and simply closed his eyes and stopped writing midsentence. Rachel had desperately tried CPR, as did the paramedics on arrival, but to no avail. We later found out that he had died of a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

The day Ashley died our world fell apart. It was unbelievable that someone so fit and healthy could just sit on the settee, close his eyes and die.

During his last London Marathon, Ashley had reached Big Ben and running alongside him was a big red blob. When I asked my sister what the charity was, she said that it looked like “CRY”. We both wondered what that stood for.

Two weeks before Ashley died, I saw a television programme where a couple were explaining how their son had died suddenly, and that they were now involved with CRY.

Finding CRY helped us realise that we are not alone, that there were people there that could help us, and it gives us something to focus on.

We have met many people in the years since we joined, people who we can say have become true and trusted friends.

We now want to give something back and help out in any way we can.

Ashley Goodwin