James and Cloe Green fell in love with one another when they were teenagers. Once ready to start a family together, they tied the knot.
The two knew they wanted a large family, especially James, who was infatuated by the idea of being a father.
At the age of 17, Cloe fell pregnant for the first time. That came as a surprise, but they were both excited.
When their first son, Leo, was welcomed into the world, they were thrilled. Two years later, they had another son, Oliver, and then a daughter, Meghan.
The couple’s fourth child, Miley, was born with cerebral palsy and required extra special care, so James and Cloe decided they would have no more children and she was fitted with a contraception implant to prevent any future pregnancies. But God had other plans. Cloe somehow fell pregnant again.
“James said it was meant to be for us to have more babies,” Cloe said.
Soon after, babies Lacey and Lexi were born. Sadly, they both had cerebral palsey, just like their older sister.
The couple eventually became parents of eight children, and decided it was enough.
With that many children, Cloe was a stay-at-home mother and took care of the children, but James was also heavily involved with their upbringing. He worked from home and he was the one who took the children to and from school every day.
“He’d do the school run, then go to work at the café before picking the kids up,” Cloe said. “Then he’d sit and play games and read until bedtime. He had so much energy.”
Heartbreakingly, the family’s ideal life was shattered into a million pieces when James suddenly died.
Just twelve weeks after their youngest child was born, James woke up around 4:30 one morning and felt numb. He then stopped breathing suddenly.
Cloe performed CPR on her husband while waiting for the ambulance to arrive. “I wanted to scream and cry but knew I needed to keep calm,” Cloe said. James died in his bed when he was just 31 years old.
His death was sudden, especially because he was a healthy young man, or at least that’s what everyone taught so.
In fact, no one had noticed before, but James suffered from high blood pressure.
He had something called hypertensive heart disease, a kind of heart disease caused by prolonged elevated blood pressure.
Many people people who suffer from the condition have the disease without knowing it, and such was the case with James.
And because James didn’t get regular physical examinations — which are recommended for all adults — no one knew how bad the situation was.
“In my darkest moments I wondered how on earth I would do this without James. But I looked at those eight little faces all depending on me and I knew I had to do this for them and for James,” Cloe said.
“He loved being a dad more than anything and has made me a strong enough parent to face this job alone,” she added.
The entire community gathered together and raised around $10,000 for the family which they used to renovate the family garden to give the children a nice place to play.
