Finding light in the darkness after double tragedy
IN THE space of four years Elizabeth Sim lost a husband to suicide, fell back in love with her “childhood sweetheart”, got engaged, and then watched helplessly as her new fiancé was killed in a crash with a lorry.
It would be enough to plunge most people into a spiral towards “very dark places” and, for Elizabeth, it did. But only for a while.
“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like my life, but like a dream, but I am so proud of how far I have come,” she says.
She is disarmingly positive as she talks about life after the two tragic deaths she witnessed. The first was when husband Paul hanged himself in the family’s garage in 2012.
The second was as she cruised along the A40 on her motorbike just behind new fiancé Matt King in 2016, chatting to him through the headset the couple wore on long rides. They were on their way home after a Sunday spin up to Llandovery for lunch.
“Matt always made me ride out front so it was my pace,” said the 44-yearold, who works as a nurse at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.
“Coming back from Llandovery the roads were quite windy but I wasn’t really feeling it and I didn’t know why. I told
Matt through the headset to go on in front after we got through the twisty bends and I would just follow him.
“The road straightened out and we had this beautiful open road ahead. I could see an Army lorry coming at a junction and it just didn’t stop. It cut across our road and just took Matt out.”
As the events unfolded almost in slow motion before her it became surreal - even more so because Elizabeth could hear Matt through her headset.
“He knew,” said Elizabeth, from Bridgend. Her first priority was to steer her own bike around the crash before parking up and running back to Matt.
“It had all gone quiet in my own head,” she said. “I took my helmet off but regretted that straightaway because I couldn’t talk to Matt then.”
The lorry driver, a Dutch soldier in the UK as part of a military exercise, had already started working on Matt. “I could see the terrified look in his face,” Liz said. “I went to pieces on the side of the road. It was awful.”
Matt died in hospital after the crash which happened at around 2pm between Halfway and Trecastle in Powys.
The couple had been engaged for less than 10 weeks after Matt had proposed to her on her 40th birthday in January. Liz is the first to admit she had had her “dark days” but wants to speak out to show others that there is life after bereavement.
Not everyone experiences it twice though.
“It’s not easy, it’s a struggle, and the dark days still have the ability to consume you,” she says, albeit with her characteristic sunny voice. “But in that darkness I have found a fight and more passion than I thought possible. I want to leave my children and family a bucket full of happy memories.
“Life is both tough and cruel but it’s equally amazing.” Today Liz is a qualified nurse. At the time of Matt’s crash she was just coming towards the end of her training. Life had taken a turn for the better after a tough few years.
Liz has lived in Bridgend all her life and is the first to admit she hadn’t ventured too far as she grew up in the Welsh town. Matt, who was her first boyfriend at primary school, had come back into her life in 2012 . He was the one who kept popping over to check up on her in the weeks after her husband Paul had killed himself.
On the day Paul initially attempted to end his life Liz had been on her way home from a dance competition with her two children, Fern and Jake.
Nearly home, she pulled over to check a text on her phone. It was from Paul.
“Normally I would leave it but I pulled over because I just knew something wasn’t right,” she said.
“It was Paul and it said: ‘Leave me to the police because when you get home you will be a widow’. When I got home he was hanging in the garage.”
Telling her young children to stay outside Liz managed to get Paul down in time. “I thought I had saved him,” she continued. “But obviously I didn’t because he did it again two weeks later.”
The second time round there was nothing Liz could do. They h ad been married for two years.
“At the time it felt like suicide in Bridgend was the norm,” Liz said. “It kind of felt like it was all we were hearing. It seemed to be one after the other.”
But Liz refused to be simply another statistic: “I’m quite a positive person. I knew if I dwelt on it I would go down a deep hole and I didn’t want to do that.”
It was Matt, with his lust for life and a penchant for motorbikes, that helped Liz see the fun in life again. “I always thought motorbikes were dangerous and were for idiots,” she said.
“But Matt got me to go on the back with him. He said you can’t say you don’t like them until you try it.”
Matt, a “proud Welshman” who “lived life with every breath”, pulled Liz along with him, taking her out of her comfort zone. Liz was hooked and the couple soon en
joyed
weekends away with a group of biker friends as part of a large motorcycling community calledcome true. We were going The Pheasant Pluckers. to be a complete family, But on March 23, the day I guess, with my two and tragedy struck, it was just James, Matt’s son. I didn’t the two of them. know how I was going to
Those friends have suppull myself out of it.” ported her through the Fern and Jake, from hard times that followed Liz’s first marriage before but so too have a remarkPaul, both adored Matt. able group of people she They were just 19 and 18 has met through an old when Matt died and, in passion she has picked up the midst of her grief, Liz again of her own accord: suddenly heard her son running. Not just any old crying upstairs and realrunning, either, but ultraised Jake had hardly left marathons. his room.
“Paul gave me my love “Jake had sunk too and, of running,” said Liz. “He hearing his sobs, I sudproposed at the top of denly thought I couldn’t Snowdon and he did so carry on like I was othermany hikes and runs for wise I was going to take charity.” them both with me and I
She has run the Snowdidn’t want them to live don Marathon three times like that.” since his death and each Someone suggested she one was for him, she added. get into running and in 2016
On September 12 she she did her first half-marcompleted her first ever athon. “I had a focus, I was 100-mile ultramarathon doing something that was along the south Wales moving forward,” she says. coast, raising over £1,000 “It was my saving grace, my for the Wales Air Ambutherapy if you like. lance in the process. “My family and friends
“In the days after Matt think I am absolutely I didn’t cope,” she says, crazy but they understand still with a cheery note that my past is what drives in her Welsh accent. “I me forward.” didn’t leave home and my Training with the Ogdaughter basically did all more Phoenix Runners, the cooking and cleaning. she signed up for the 2017 Life had become really London Marathon and in dark. Matt had gone. He that same year completed was more than a friend. I the Dublin and Edinburgh had known him all my life marathons too. and our dreams had just Ultramarathons seemed the next logical step: “I thought I might as well,” she said. She finished the Dragon 100, a 100-mile race from Rhossili Bay to Cardiff Bay, on September 13 this year, a race she did in aid of the Welsh Air Ambulance in memory of Matt.
True to her sunny disposition she didn’t really enter the dark places that are usually associated with long-distance races that go through the night.
“I’ve been to darker places in my life,” she said. “I often wonder if I had lost Matt first would I have thought about ending my life? You do think: ‘Would I, could I?’ It was an awful time and it did make me think. But having lost Paul I knew I could never do that.
“I would just advocate that others who are in the darkness to find their sunflower, find something that makes them search for the sunshine and not sit in the darkness.”
And, with that, she grabs the dog leads and heads out the door with her two dogs out onto the trails in the Ogmore Valley.
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