Mark Hackett & Emma Butler

Myself and my partner, Emma, lost our son in 2019. He was 26.

He lost his life in a crash. If you noticed, I use the word ‘crash’ because families of victims of crashes find it an insult when the word ‘accident’ is used.

As you can understand our world fell apart and my partner released her emotions and grieved.

I, on the other hand, found it very difficult to grieve.

I put it down to being a man and taking a protective role, trying to be strong for everyone. It’s not just being a man, some people just don’t know how to grieve. I’ve never grieved for anybody in the past so you can imagine there was a ticking time bomb inside me.

The ticking time bomb was unlocked one day when I was watching Sky News.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was walking down the queues of people who were lining up to pay their respects to the Queen.

He said he’d been talking to people and they said how the outpouring of emotion for the Queen has helped them to start grieving and to unlock emotions.

It was at this stage I started to release my emotions.

What he had said made me realise that I wasn’t on my own and there wasn’t something wrong with me. I had bottled all the grief for three years and it was eating away at me inside.

I’ve learnt that if you’re struggling to grieve, tell somebody, because sometimes your loved ones might not understand why you’re not showing emotion.

I would say to any family out there who loses somebody through a road traffic collision, or crash, get in touch with RoadPeace. You will be able to talk to people who are in the same

situation as you, dealing with the same emotions and give you all kinds of support and advice.

You will realise you’re not on your own. Because sometimes you can become isolated and those near to you just don’t know what to say to you.

RoadPeace has done so much for us as a family and now we have a RoadPeace family as well.