Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THE BABY SENT TO HEAL OUR PAIN
Baby girl is ‘wee bit of light’ 11 months after her big brother dies in river tragedy
A FAMILY told yesterday they found out they were expecting just weeks after their son was swept to his death in a river.
Five-year-old Kayden Fleck died less than a year ago having plunged into the ice-cold Braid at Ballymena, Co Antrim.
Parents Leanne and Darrel said baby Elliana “shone a wee bit of light on our family”.
Darrel said: “Jayden had got into the river to try and catch Kayden. He’d got the tip of his finger but the current was too strong and he couldn’t hold on to him.”
Leanne, who also has an older son, Daniel, 15, said: “It was awful, we couldn’t make sense of it. Jayden said he held on to the grass, he clung to it. Kayden couldn’t.”
SURGERY
While the boys were identical in almost every way, Kayden had been extremely ill from birth.
Born with a congenital heart defect, hypoplastic right heart syndrome, he spent the first year of his life in hospital, travelling from Belfast to Birmingham, to Antrim and back undergoing surgery and intensive treatment for his condition. The youngster didn’t step foot in his family home until two days before his first birthday.
Leanne said: “That start in life meant Jayden was always that little bit stronger. Kayden had his first open heart surgery when he was 36 hours old, and the last one less than a year before he died.
“We’d hoped that one would see him through until he was 15.”
Kayden’s tough start in life only strengthened his bond with his brother, and little Jayden was his righthand man through it all.
After that, says Leanne, the boys were inseparable. And when their sister Amelia came along less than two years later, she got stuck straight in. Leanne said: “She was joined at the hip with Kayden as well. Now she says a prayer to him every night when she goes to bed. Even though he was just a toddler when she was born, he loved babies. He’d have loved Ellianna.”
And the family are determined the baby, now seven weeks old, will grow up knowing all about her brother.
Leanne said: “I said from day one, from the minute we lost him that he’s always going to be part of our family. So we will make sure she knows him.”
Complications from Ellianna’s birth meant Leanne spent three days in hospital in the run-up to Christmas, only getting home to her family on Christmas morning. On the way home, Darrel and I took a drive over to the grave,” she said. “It was hard, knowing Kayden wasn’t there to share it all – the joy of the baby, the joy of Christmas with his family. That’s the hardest part.
“People have said to me they find it hard I’m still talking about him after nearly a year.
“But that’s my way of coping. I talk about him constantly, if I’m here by myself I’ll talk to his pictures.
“If he’s gone five years or 10, I’ll still talk about him and to him because to me he is still here.
“And even though we can’t see him and we can’t hear him he’s going to live on in us, and in the other wee ones. Ellianna will know him. He’s her big brother.”
We can’t see or hear him but he’ll live on in us... Ellianna will know him LEANNE FLECK YESTERDAY
IT’S almost a year since Leanne and Darrel Fleck’s beloved little boy died.
Mischievous and fun-loving, Kayden was just five when he was swept to his death on the Braid river at the edge of Ballymena, Co Antrim.
His identical twin Jayden tried desperately to save him, grabbing at his finger tips as the icy water carried him off.
But now, as the family brace themselves for the heartbreaking anniversary, an unexpected ray of light has given them the strength to get through it – baby Ellianna, Kayden’s little sister.
“We didn’t know she was coming,” said Leanne. “But about three weeks after we lost Kayden, through all the pain and darkness of that time, we discovered I was pregnant.
“It was a huge shock. And more than anything, it was just so bittersweet because we were going through all the emotions of losing Kayden and trying to figure out what way our family was going to go from there.
“Then, suddenly, she came along. “She shone a wee bit of light on our family. We had people telling us it was too soon for us to cope after losing Kayden – but then we had others offering us support as well and they said she was our wee blessing.
“And I think she was.
“I’m never going to forget Kayden. I’m never going to forget that day. And when the anniversary comes around I don’t know how we’re going to be but at least now we have our baby to focus on.
“She’s healthy, she’s here, she’s our wee girl and we will love and care for her like we did Kayden and our other children.”
That fateful Saturday morning February started out full of hope and fun. Leanne and Darrel had tied the knot just two weeks earlier with their handsome twins as ring bearers and they were moving from Ballykeel estate to a new home in Cullybackey.
That day, they returned to their old house to collect the last of their things. Leanne said: “We got in the car – me and Darrel, the twins and our daughter Amelia – and headed back to Ballykeel.
“I just wonder if we hadn’t gone back to the house to clear up that day, or if we hadn’t decided to move to Cullybackey at all, would we have lost him?
“Darrel was out sorting the shed and I was in the sitting room when one of the boys came in and said, ‘Can we go out the back?’.
“Even now I can’t say for sure which of them it was, because I was taking down these old blinds and I just said, ‘OK, but don’t be going away’.
“I didn’t even look round to see which one it was and I hate myself for that because I was too busy doing these bits and pieces to look around.
“They never went anywhere without us. They never went far but when I went out to put the blinds in the bin, they weren’t there.”
CURRENT
After looking in a nearby play park, the couple split up and it was Darrel who first became aware just how grave the situation was.
He recalled: “I was looking for the boys and then I heard, ‘Daddy help, Daddy help’, and there was Jayden running across the path.
“He was soaked from his neck to his feet. I asked him where Kayden was and he said, ‘He fell in the river Daddy, he fell in the river’. I was running up and down the river looking for Kayden, searching for the bright orange jumper he was wearing that day.”
A man passing by heard the commotion and called for help. Darrel added: “They were quick but by the time the police and Search and Rescue were there, Kayden was long gone.”
The schoolboy, a pupil at Harryville Primary School in Ballymena, was pulled from the river four miles away.