In the midst of every mum’s nightmare, I had to make a choice Harry he system hero
My son Harry walked back from the raffle prize table holding up a bottle of gin. ‘Go and pick something for yourself,’ I urged.
It was December 2022, and Harry, then 11, played for our local footy team, Hastings Athletic.
He’d just won a raffle prize at the club’s Christmas party.
The table was full of sweet treats, toys and games.
‘But I wanted to get something for you,’ he smiled, handing the bottle to his dad, Lee, then 49.
Our boy had always been a caring and generous soul. He’d give you his last Rolo. On family camping trips, I’d take a stash of treats for him and his older sister Jess, then 13.
But Harry would share them out with all his friends.
He played football five times a week and was a rocket with the ball.
He was always winning trophies and medals, but he never boasted.
When he scored a goal he’d do a backflip. Usually land on his bum! The crowd would gasp, before he’d giggle and jump up to a chorus of laughter.
It made his day to make people laugh.
A week after the party, on 15 December 2022, it snowed and the school central heating broke down.
‘Snow day!’ Harry grinned.
He and Jess spent the day at home together while me and Lee went to work.
They were sensible kids, and anyway Lee was due back early to take them to a dentist appointment.
Only, that afternoon, a friend pulled me out of my office.
‘There’s been a bad accident,’ she said. ‘Harry’s been airlifted to hospital.’ The rest is a blur. I remember getting home to find Jess with the police.
Uninjured, but covered in broken glass.
Too shocked to speak. Shaking, I checked her over, held her tight.
She was taken to my mum’s while the police blue-lighted me to King’s
College Hospital.
Lee was there, distraught. ‘Harry’s just gone into surgery,’ he wept.
In the waiting room, he’d told them what happened.
They’d been driving back from the dentist.
‘Harry was in the front, Jess in the back,’ Lee said.
A flatbed van, carrying wooden scaffolding boards, appeared travelling in the opposite direction.
One of the boards had come loose.
Slipped out the side, so it was hanging in mid-air at an angle across the carriageway.
‘There was no time to react,’ Lee wept.
The board smashed through the windscreen, hitting Harry in the chest, sending his head flying forwards then backwards with the force.
One of his lungs had collapsed.
Now surgeons were battling to reduce the swelling on his brain. In tears, I paced up and down the corridor.
For a moment I was distracted by a poster on the wall about a little blonde girl. Georgia.
The poster said she’d collapsed on holiday from a brain aneurysm. Been flown back to the UK to this very hospital, but died. Her parents donated her organs.
That poor family,
I thought sadly.
For Harry there was hope.
I clung to it. We waited 24 hours to see if his brain would recover. But medics confirmed our worst fears. His brain couldn’t recover from the trauma, despite their best efforts. ‘There’s nothing more that we can do,’ a doctor told me and I fell to my
There’d been an accident, Harry was in hospital
knees screaming.
Later, another doctor brought up organ donation.
The girl from that poster, Georgia, swam into my mind.
‘She saved lives, Harry could too,’ I whispered to Lee.
‘We spoke about it with him once, do you remember?’ he said.
I’d forgotten but now, as Lee reminded me, the brief chat that we’d had came flooding back.
Around the time of the football club’s party where he won the gin for his dad, organ donation had randomly come up as we chatted as a family.
Harry had said it sounded a bit weird.
‘Some children are so poorly they can’t climb trees or play football. When you die, you can give your organs to somebody else so they can live their life like you did,’ I’d explained.
‘I suppose so, because you don’t need them any more,’ he shrugged, after thinking for a moment.
We moved on to another subject and I thought no more of it.
Never dreamed I would have to.
But now…
‘It’s what he would have wanted,’ I said.
Harry had the most amazing, jam-packed 11 years of life.
If just a snippet of that could go to someone else, that would be something.
Doctors were able to take Harry’s liver, kidneys and pancreas.
A few weeks later, we buried him under an oak tree in a churchyard, near his football club’s home ground.
You can hear the football matches from there.
‘He’ll be cheering them on,’ Lee said.
Meanwhile the van driver, scaffolder, Russell Le Beau, 34, was charged with causing death by dangerous driving.
Amid the gloom came some comfort as we discovered Harry’s organs had helped save five lives.
In September 2023, Le Beau pleaded guilty at Lewes Crown Court.
Nothing would bring Harry back, but it was a relief to know that we’d get justice.
While waiting for the sentencing I went on local radio to talk about organ donation awareness.
Another mum, called Ilse, spoke before me and, as I listened, the hairs on my arms stood on end.
It was Georgia’s mum. The girl from the poster. Afterwards the two of us struck up a bond.
United, not only through grief but also because our children had done something remarkable. At Le Beau’s sentencing, in November 2023, I felt sick as I learned he’d done absolutely nothing to prevent the scaffolding boards swinging out into the carriageway.
There were no straps, net
Harry (left) with Lee, Jess and me or tarpaulin in the vehicle to secure the load.
And Le Beau would’ve been able to see the protruding board in his wing mirror.
He drove on regardless. Harry’s death could so easily have been avoided.
Le Beau was sentenced to four years in jail and disqualified from driving for seven.
We all miss Harry so much, but I know that a little part of him lives on in others.
In September 2023 he was posthumously honoured at an award ceremony where he and other organ donors received The Order of St John Award.
‘Harry’s still winning medals!’ Jess, 14, said after I’d accepted the award on his behalf.
I laughed.
And hearing it echo, I said to myself… That’s made Harry’s day.
Harry’s donated organs helped save five lives
FUNDRAISER
Maria is doing a fire walk this June for bereavement charity You Raise Me Up, who were a lifeline for the family following Harry’s death. See youraisemeup.enthuse.com and search Maria Dennis.