LOVING AND LOSING Gareth Arena’s wife died four months before their friend and surrogate bore them a son.
After losing his wife to cystic fibrosis, Gareth Arena is now raising their son, Rixon, who was born via surrogate four months after his mum’s death
Mixing a bottle of baby formula during an interview with WHO, Gareth Arena reveals he is still coming to terms with life as a single dad after the death of his wife, Bec, last year. “There are very mixed feelings,” admits Gareth, as his baby, Rixon, sleeps in their home in Townsville, Queensland. “I don’t think I would be coping as well as I am today if I didn’t have Rixon to care for.” He pauses, interrupted by a wail. “Hang on,” he says, moving towards the nursery. “You can’t predict anything with these little fellas.”
Gareth could have predicted few of the twists and turns of his recent life. In a story that swept social media and touched two nations, Gareth, 30, lost his wife, RSPCA worker Bec, at the age of 30 to cystic fibrosis on Sept. 3— four months before their baby boy, Rixon, was born to surrogate mother Jessica Brockie. Brockie, who was Bec’s childhood best friend and is the wife of New Zealand soccer star Jeremy Brockie, had offered to be the couple’s surrogate due to Bec’s crippling and incurable illness. “It’s still very hard. I don’t have Bec here, but it would be a lot harder without him,” says Gareth of his boy. “I’ve just got to get on with it.”
Forging ahead has been the theme of Gareth’s life since meeting his “kind, gentle, animal-crazy” wife. The pair, who married in 2015, had always wanted children, “but we knew it would be difficult because of Bec’s illness,” says Gareth, a fitter and turner. “We tried to put it on the back burner early on, but then we really started to look into ways of starting a family, like surrogacy or adoption.”
“It’s still very hard, I don’t have Bec here” —Gareth Arena
That’s when Jessica stepped up. “At first, I couldn’t believe someone would want to do that for us,” says Gareth. “I remember thinking, ‘Is she serious?’ But Jes was genuine from the start.”
After mother-of-two Jessica became pregnant with Gareth and Bec’s child early last year, the couple’s thoughts turned to the future. With an average life expectancy of 37 for CF patients, Bec and Gareth hoped to grab at least a few years’ grace to bring up their baby together. But a routine, home-based “tune-up” antibiotic treatment turned into a hospital stay last August as Bec’s condition deteriorated to the point where she needed an oxygen mask and cylinder to help her breathe. Still, “She was never an average person,” says Gareth, choking on tears. “Her lung function wasn’t very good but she was so positive and such a fighter, she always out-performed people with better lung function, so I always kind of thought Bec would live past 37 and then there might have been some medical advances in those seven years. It might even have become possible to have a lung transplant.”
But hope ran out just before Jessica, who lives with Jeremy and their two kids, Piper and Oskar, in South Africa, was scheduled to return for a 20-week pregnancy scan in Townsville. “I kind of knew stuff was getting serious and asked Jes to come a little bit sooner so Bec could see the baby,”
“Losing Bec has made me realise what I’ve got” —Gareth Arena
says Gareth. “She booked an earlier flight, but she was still 24 hours too late. Jes was actually at the airport waiting for the plane when I called to tell her Bec had passed. We didn’t realise it was the end until the last few days.”
Amid his grief, Gareth now had to face the prospect of single fatherhood—a role he has since embraced with help from both his and Bec’s parents and strong community support, including a Go Fund Me campaign that has so far raised more than $20,000. On Jan. 20 Rixon was born at Townsville General Hospital—the same hospital in which Bec died. “What an amazing journey to be part of,” tweeted Jessica after the birth. “Memories that I will treasure forever. Thank you Bec and Gareth for letting us travel this road with you.”
It’s a journey that continues for the tired single dad. Unable to work while caring for the baby, Gareth also can’t get paid parental leave until tiny Rixon’s birth certificate is amended to feature the biological parents’ names, rather than the surrogate’s. “It’s not easy,” says Gareth, who is also campaigning for greater CF awareness, research and funding in whatever spare time he has. “Rixon is a good baby, but even if he wasn’t I would never complain. Losing Bec has made me appreciate what I’ve got, more than anything. Now I never take anything for granted. I really enjoy each day.”