“I used to be in shock. I used to be keeled over for days sick to my abdomen. It is fully indescribable,” Meredith wrote in an open letter about her husband’s tragic dying.
Meredith Gaudreau is opening up concerning the unimaginable ache she endured after her husband, Johnny Gaudreau, and his brother, Matthew, had been tragically killed final August whereas using bikes of their New Jersey hometown.
In an emotional letter revealed Thursday, June 12, on the Gamers’ Tribune — practically one 12 months after their dying — Meredith mirrored on the second she discovered Johnny had handed. The Gaudreau brothers had been serving to put together for his or her youthful sister Katie’s wedding ceremony on the time of the tragedy.
“You kissed all of us goodbye and mentioned you’d see us later. And that was that,” she recalled. “Katie known as, and he or she mentioned one thing had occurred however she did not know what precisely. My dad drove me over to your dad and mom’, and I used to be pondering the entire time about how I used to be going that will help you by way of no matter it could possibly be that had occurred to Matty. After which I walked up the entrance porch and realized absolutely the worst had occurred and that it was each of you.”
“I used to be in shock. I used to be keeled over for days sick to my abdomen,” she wrote. “It is fully indescribable. The one one that can relate to me is my very own sister-in-law. I see her and my coronary heart breaks for her.”
Johnny was 31 and Matthew, 29, when a drunk driver, Sean Higgins, allegedly struck and killed them close to their hometown. Higgins now faces six costs, together with aggravated manslaughter and reckless vehicular murder. He has pleaded not responsible.
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The occasion was postponed and is now deliberate for July 2025.
“To go from preparing for an exquisite wedding ceremony all week together with your sister, to being in a funeral dwelling with Madeline making an attempt to determine all these items out — it simply damage a lot,” Meredith, who was pregnant with the couple’s third baby on the time, shared. “It was bizarre and it was terrible. I needed to go to the physician for our third child. The primary of my appointments the place you were not holding my hand.”
Meredith and Johnny shared daughter Noa, 2, and son Johnny Jr., who was simply 15 months outdated when his father died. Meredith later welcomed their third baby, son Carter, in April. Matthew and his spouse, Madeline, had been additionally anticipating their first baby on the time.
“I checked out Noa and child Johnny and I felt a ache that I hadn’t felt earlier than,” she wrote. “Our two infants who need to develop up with out their dad, with out their superb uncle.”
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She described the crushing weight of grief that adopted, writing that it obtained so unhealthy, she may hardly arise.
“I considered our child inside me. I could not arise,” she admitted. “I used to be awake and having nightmares. Considering of you in that second. Considering of Matty. It is simply the worst factor I may have ever imagined. And instantly, I missed you greater than I knew was doable.”
Regardless of the sorrow, Meredith mentioned the help from the hockey world introduced her some consolation. Johnny’s former workforce, the Columbus Blue Jackets, honored him earlier than their first preseason sport of the 2024–25 season, and gamers wore helmet stickers with doves and the numbers 13 (Johnny) and 21 (Matthew, who performed for Boston School) on them. Patches had been additionally added to jerseys initially of the common season.
“The hockey world, the sports activities world, they confirmed up for us, too,” she wrote. “To see individuals go from simply understanding about ‘Johnny Hockey,’ to listening to about how superb of a father you had been, of an individual you had been? I do know that is what would have mattered to you.”
