Triple tragedy leads mother and son to Nevis challenge
A mother who lost two sons and her husband over just a few years to brain tumours will be travelling to Ben Nevis with one of her other sons to complete a climb for the charity she set up in their memory.
Marie Hughes and her son Lucas, along with 37 other brave, willing volunteers, will take part in the family challenge run by Oscar’s Paediatric Brain Tumour Charity on Sunday May 1. Marie hopes to raise more than £5,000 towards support, care, awareness of children with brain tumours and research.
She set up the charity along with her husband Ian after they lost their son Oscar in 2014. The charity runs a number of events and has previously taken 70 children to the top of Snowdon and Scafell Pike.
Ben Nevis is the hardest challenge yet, but not as hard a challenge as Marie and Lucas have faced in the past seven years.
Oscar was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2013, passing away after a relapse in May 2014, aged nine.
Devastated by his death, his family and friends channelled their sorrow into raising money to help other children facing such a horrible disease.
The charity had raised more than £250,000 when Ian received the news that he, too, had cancer and despite operations, the cancer had spread to his brain. Marie lost her husband and Lucas’s father in early 2020, but the heart-breaking story was not to end there. Soon after Ian’s funeral, Marie’s youngest son Milo was also diagnosed with a brain tumour aged just four years old and died last year.
Marie and Lucas are walking in their memory and in the hope the charity can go some way to helping others facing what they faced as a family. For more information on the charity and the family’s story, please go to www.oscarspbtc. org and to donate, visit Marie’s fundraising page at www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ marie-lucas-ben-nevis2022.