Mum's urgent message after suddenly losing son and husband within two months

Mum Lisa Wilson was devastated when her son Tom died aged 22 after being hit on the back of the head with a hockey stick while training at his local club. Just after Tom’s funeral on 21 December 2015, her husband was diagnosed with a brain tumour

Hearing her son’s heart beating in another man’s chest four years after his death in a sporting accident was a moment of magic Lisa Wilson describes as “crazy.”

Listening to a little girl’s laughter as she played on the swings with her sister - fun she could now have, thanks to the liver she received from Lisa’s son - was “simply amazing.”

In all, 50 people’s lives were either saved or enhanced after former PE teacher Lisa, 61, and her husband Graham Wilson, a journalist, agreed to support their son Tom’s wishes to be an organ donor.

An enthusiastic sportsman, Tom died on 9 December 2015, aged 22, after being hit on the back of the head with a hockey stick while training at his local club, causing a massive brain haemorrhage.

Lisa, whose daughter, Pippa, is now 29, recalls: “Graham simply said ‘there’s nothing anybody can do for Tom, but there’s something Tom can do for others. Organ donation.’

“We’d been told Tom had actually signed the organ donor register during his freshers’ week at Nottingham Trent University without telling us.

“As his parents, we still had the ultimate say in what happened with his body but, thank goodness, in the depths of my grief, I managed to listen to Graham and see through Tom’s wishes.”

Now Lisa counts Fatima SiddiquI, 11, from King’s Cross, north London, who was in end stage liver failure caused by a rare condition called neonatal ichthyosis-sclerosing cholangitis, before receiving Tom’s organ, and Gordon Paw, 69, who needed a new heart because of cardiomyopathy - a disorder affecting the heart muscle - as family.

She was honoured to stand with them both at the 2022 British Transplant Games in Leeds and to hand over the baton they dubbed ‘Tom’s Baton’ to officially start proceedings.

She says: “There I was, with two amazing new people in my life who were alive thanks to Tom’s organs, with positive ripples spreading through whole families, whole communities, for years to come.”

She then felt Tom’s heart beating in Gordon’s chest when she presented him with a bronze medal for table tennis this summer at the games in Nottingham - the city where he’d signed the donor register.

The Tom Wilson Memorial Fund, a charity which Lisa launched to promote organ donation, will also be sponsoring Gordon to compete at the World Transplant Games in Dresden, Germany, next year.

Lisa says: “It was so poignant for this all to happen in Nottingham, where Tom had been at university, almost unreal.”

Lisa’s ability to see life’s positives is all the more commendable considering the extent of her personal loss.

Just after Tom’s funeral on 21 December 2015, Graham suffered what doctors believed to be a mini stroke. Further scans revealed a brain tumour, so he started chemotherapy, but then developed sepsis. It ravaged his body and on 20 February 2016 , aged 63, Graham - Lisa’s husband of 25 years - died.

“Those few months were simply awful, none of it seemed quite real - organising two funerals and working out how Pippa and I could carry on,” she says. “Strangely, knowing Tom’s organs should save several lives kept me going and, that spring, I wrote letters to the recipients via Michelle, the transplant coordinator.”

Within weeks Lisa, who lives in Barnstaple, Devon, and Pippa received replies from a mum - who turned out to be Fatima’s mother Lubna - talking about her daughter’s new liver, with photos on a memory stick of the little girl’s hugely swollen belly before the transplant and afterwards looking happy and healthy.

“I can’t quite put into words the lift that letter and those photos gave us. After the worst possible few months, I felt like the world wasn’t such a bad place. There was some light and happiness,” says Lisa.

Exchanging letters – kept anonymous at this stage to comply with donor regulations – it wasn’t until 2018 that Lisa finally got to meet Fatima, then five, in a park near the Oval in South London.

The little girl rushed up to her with a bunch of flowers and a fluffy unicorn.

Lisa recalls: “Finally meeting Fatima, her mum Lubna and her younger sister Sophia, feeling the warmth of their skin, seeing their smiles as they played on the swings, it was simply incredible.

“Lubna asked me about Tom, what he liked and disliked, and we chatted for hours, with me telling her how much he loved sport and what a positive person he was. I made them promise me that Fatima would keep running and swimming, she’d stay fit and healthy, which is all Tom would’ve wanted.”

Around the same time, Gordon - a West Ham fan like Tom and his dad– also replied to Lisa’s letter, saying how Tom’s heart had given him a “second chance.”

Then living in Essex, Lisa says: “I finally got to meet Gordon at the club’s London stadium in 2019, the year after I’d met Fatima, and to press my ear against his chest and hear Tom’s heartbeat - it was amazing.

“I was crying my eyes out, and Gordon just said how astonishing this gift was, how kind and selfless Tom and I were. I just said I hoped it would inspire more people to do the same. It had helped me to heal.

“I told Gordon the same as I had Fatima, that Tom had been very sporty and healthy, and all he would’ve wanted was for him to carry on with that.

“Gordon told me he was going to pick up his table tennis bat again for the first time in decades and enter the British Transplant Games, an annual sporting event for anyone who’s had the gift of life from someone else.”

Now in regular contact with Gordon from Durham and Fatima, Lisa continues: “Gordon says Tom’s his hero, and when he tires on the treadmill, he can hear Tom telling him not to give up, to keep going.”

The fact that Gordon and Fatima both fulfilled her wishes, by becoming sporty, made Lisa’s meeting with them at the 2022 Transplant Games all the more poignant.

“It was so symbolic that we had such a spread of ages there in our little huddle, a perfect metaphor,” says Lisa, who now devotes her time to raising awareness of organ donation.

While many others received organs, bones, skins or tissue from Tom, Lisa doesn’t feel compelled to meet them all.

She says: “I don’t have to hug or even meet them to get a warm glow knowing the world is a better place.

“In organ donation terms, Tom was basically gold dust. Early 20s, extremely fit and healthy, his organs kept healthy because he was on a ventilator.”

But knowing how traumatic her own sudden loss was, she urges anyone wanting to donate their organs to tell their family, even though the law has now changed to one of assumed consent for organ donation.

She says: “It’s still completely vital to tell your nearest and dearest your wishes, because they still have the final say. I’m just so grateful in that dark hour when we were told our son wasn’t coming home that Graham gave me the best advice ever, to donate his organs.”

As for her transplant family, Fatima has just started senior school, and Gordon, a dad-of-two, has now retired from his job as a psychiatric nurse. Later this month he is going on a cruise with his wife Patricia to celebrate their 44th wedding anniversary and his 70th birthday.

“These two amazing humans have grabbed life with both hands since getting their second chances, Tom would be so proud.

“I’ve lost a son and a husband, both way before their time, but what I’ve gained since has been completely invaluable.”

Gordon, who has become a grandfather of four since receiving his new heart, says: “I was very close to dying before my transplant.

“Simply walking, each step reminds me of Tom’s kindness. Being a grandpa is amazing. Without Tom none of this would have happened.”

Fatima says: “Lisa is so kind and lovely, and Tom is my hero, he saved me. I love sport now, just like he did.”

For more information go to tomwilsonmemorialfund.co.uk/