I lost my dad to a heart attack at age 11 – thinking about Liam Payne and Sir Chris Hoy’s poor kids brought it all back

WRITER nd mum Emma Lazenby, 45, knows just how Liam Payne’s son will feel after losing his father so young…

Her words were softly spoken, but there was a sense of urgency.

“Emma, wake up. Your dad’s had a heart attack.”

Still sleepy, I thought my mum was talking about someone else’s father.

“My dad? Are you sure?” I ­questioned, sitting up in bed.

It was 6am and he’d already been taken away in an ambulance.

Mum and I followed, me still in my pyjamas, my heart smashed into a thousand little pieces.

My dad died suddenly when I was 11, so when I heard the news of former One Direction star Liam Payne’s tragic death in Buenos Aires, Argentina, last week, my first thoughts went to his little boy, Bear, seven, and the horrific task his mum, Cheryl, had in having to break the news.

While Liam’s death was shocking for everyone, it ­transported me back to the moment my mum woke me up on June 11, 1990, to tell me my dad, aged 66, had ­suffered a huge heart attack.

She’d found him unresponsive in the night after he had gone downstairs to make a cuppa, unable to sleep.

My mum didn’t want to wake me any earlier, despite the ambulance leaving at 5am.

She said she had wanted to let me sleep a while longer, knowing I probably wouldn’t sleep again for some time — all the while managing her own shock, fear and heartbreak.

I’m now 45, with three children of my own — a five-year-old daughter and two sons aged eight and 11.

My youngest boy is so close to Bear’s age and I couldn’t imagine being in Cheryl’s position, having to tell him that heartbreaking news.

On the morning my dad died, we were taken straight into a family room at the hospital.

It felt clinical, like a place that could only be used to hear sad news.

“We tried everything we could — I’m so sorry,” said a man in scrubs.

Intense emotions weren’t really embraced or discussed in the early Nineties, so I was left hanging in this very lonely, terrifying space.

Scared and angry

Kids at school and most adults, actually, avoided me.

It was too awkward and the fear of saying the wrong thing was too great.

I felt like a weirdo, in a confused state of grief and disbelief.

I just wanted to talk about how awful it all was, how much I missed my dad and how bonkers death is.

My mum was grieving too and we were just trying to function as best we could.

We didn’t know how important it was to talk about our feelings.

I think I would have found solace in talking to a comforting stranger — someone who would listen to how scared I was for my mum and me.

And to admit that I even felt angry that my dad had been taken away.

Really angry.

Young brains aren’t designed to process death.

It’s all too unfair, too final, too unfathomable.

Children’s charity Barnardo’s explains that kids simply do not understand the concept of death.

Some think the deceased will come back, while older children might panic that they are going to suddenly lose other loved ones.

So they need love and support for as long as it takes for them to process the death.

We shouldn’t let things fester, if we can help it.

When kids are left with their own wild thoughts and feelings, they can dream up all kinds of awful ­outcomes.

I had conjured up in my head that something secret and sinister had happened to my dad, and that ­someone might have even been out to get him.

This is where a confused child’s grieving mind can go.

And self-loathing can quickly kick in.

You wonder if you have done something wrong that might have led to them dying.

Maybe I had made my dad too stressed that time I was a brat?

I started to think I hadn’t deserved him in the first place.

If I’d have said these things out loud, maybe there would have been some comfort from an adult normalising these thoughts for me and I would have felt less like a weird, awful girl.

When the news of Chris Hoy’s ­terminal cancer diagnosis broke over the weekend, I, like most people, thought about his wife Sarra and their young children, Callum, 10, and Chloe, seven, and the tragedy they are now facing.

It’s clear the Olympian has been slowly preparing his children for what life will hold for them after he’s gone.

When my eldest son turned 11 earlier this year, the same age I was when I lost a parent, it hit me quite hard.

I was suddenly aware of my own mortality.

I panicked and revamped my diet, started ­exercising more and generally got much ­fitter.

I’m determined to be around for my children for as long as ­possible.

Changed forever

I also started talking to them more openly about death, in the least ­morbid way possible.

There’s a lovely kids’ book, The Fox And The Feather, by Kendall Lanning, which tackles death and its aftermath beautifully as the dying cardinal assures his best friend the fox they will always be together and reminds the fox to look out for signs of his presence.

It gently talks about the many ­stages of grief, letting go and how we can find ­comfort in signs that the deceased is looking over us — in the book it’s a feather.

Losing a parent as a child is horrendous.

It changes you forever, but it doesn’t have to define you.

I remember making the decision at around 18 to live the life my dad would have wanted for me.

He used to say: “Be kind, be curious, be honest and have fun — that’s all I ask of you.”

And I say exactly the same to my kids.

But I do wonder what my childhood would have been like if I’d had support with my bereavement.

Now, there are amazing charities, like Grief Encounter, and open conversations about death seem more acceptable than when I was small.

I’m so glad that attitudes around death have changed because no child should ever feel alone and “weird” in their grief.