TRUE -LIFE
After five years in a coma, one joke changed everything for my girl
Peggy Means, 60
I clamped my hands over my ears as my daughter Jennifer bounced up and down beside me.
‘Great pass, Skylar,’ she cheered.
Jennifer, then 35, had signed her three boys up for football as soon as they were old enough.
Now she was always the loudest mum on the sidelines!
My grandsons, Skylar, then 15, Daeton, 13, and Julian, 11, were good boys.
I put that down to Jennifer’s brilliant parenting.
I loved going along to their football games when I could, but she never missed a match.
‘I couldn’t even hear my coach, you were so loud,’ Skylar moaned, as he trudged off the pitch, laughing.
A few weeks later, on 25 September 2017, I was at my job as an industrial seamstress when Jennifer’s husband called.
‘Jennifer’s been in an accident,’ he said. ‘It sounds bad.’
I rushed to the hospital, where I found my normally loud and bubbly girl on life support, in a medically induced coma.
She’d suffered catastrophic injuries when her car swerved across a road and struck a utility pole. A horrible, tragic accident. ‘She’ll get through this,’
I told the boys, wiping away their tears.
But within days, doctors pulled me and their dad aside.
‘We think it would be best if you let Jennifer pass peacefully,’ one told us.
‘No. We’re not doing that,’ I replied firmly.
I couldn’t – wouldn’t – give up on my daughter.
I spent every possible second by Jennifer’s side, only leaving when my partner Danny, then 56, took me home for a shower before dropping me back at the hospital. ‘Tell Mummy about your day,’ I encouraged the boys when they arrived after school.
It was hard for them seeing Jennifer like that, but I was certain that, despite her coma, she could hear them.
That the presence of her precious boys would help. Her brother Kyle, 40, visited too, and has always been a great support.
As weeks turned into months, Jennifer started breathing on her own.
But she was still in a coma.
‘This is how she’ll always be,’ medics warned.
‘We’ll just keep on,’ I replied.
In time, I had to get back to work.
My bosses let me take a machine home so I could sew in the morning, visit Jennifer in the afternoon, then sew again at night. I went to as many of the boys’ football games as possible.
I couldn’t shout from the sidelines as loudly as their mum, but I wanted them to know they had her support through me.
Medics were still convinced she’d never wake up
‘Skylar scored today,’ I’d gush, holding Jennifer’s hand and telling her all
