Gracie Todd was always a daddy’s girl.
Which is why watching the eight-year-old take part in this weekend’s Aberdeen Kiltwalk will be so difficult for her mum.
“She looks very much like John and is his image in terms of her personality” says Jade Todd.
“It gives me so much joy to see John’s legacy living on in her but can also be painful for me at times, too.”
It is more than two years since John Todd died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack at his home in Kingseat near Newmachar.
Both Jade and Gracie were at home, but there was no time to say goodbye to the doting 53-year-old husband and father that moments before had been laughing and joking about football.
Instead, their world was turned upside down by the loss of a loving husband and father.
“He was a full-on person – he never sat still for a minute,” says Jade of John, who worked as an offshore operations manager.
“There was no ‘I’m feeling tired or feeling down’. There was no warning signs whatsoever.”
Gracie set for Kiltwalk in memory of heart attack dad
It was Gracie’s idea to do the Kiltwalk, the charity hike that on Sunday celebrates its seventh outing in Aberdeen in its current guise.
Jade will walk the longer 18-mile course that starts in Duthie Park and winds its way to Banchory.
Gracie, meanwhile, takes on the 3.7-mile route accompanied by Jade’s mum Heather, brother Elliot and sister-in-law Rosie.
Both are walking on behalf of the Archie Child Bereavement Service that has helped Gracie and Jade in the years since John’s death.
The service, which is part of local children’s charity the Archie Foundation, steers family’s through their grief by supplying advice and excursions with other children going through the same ordeal.
For Gracie, Archie has been an invaluable support during some dark times.
“What’s happened to her life is that within the blink of an eye, everything was completely different,” says Jade.
“How does a child even start to comprehend and understand what’s going on? The majority of her friends at school have never had to face a death, let alone someone is close as your own father.”
The bereavement service also helps Jade, who has learned to speak openly with her daughter about John and the life they had together.
And though doing so sometimes brings both of them to tears, the sadness is coupled with the memory of happy times, such as when Gracie would help John around the house with his DIY projects, laughing and giggling.
“I got help that I don’t think I would have got from anywhere else,” Jade says of Archie.
“Things like being honest, and not to lie. Don’t say things [to Gracie] that weren’t true because she’s going to remember what you said for the rest of her life.”
‘I didn’t have to see him suffer or in pain’
Jade and Gracie talk about John all the time.
And he will be foremost in their thoughts on Sunday as they take part in the Kiltwalk wearing matching tartan kindly donated by Newmachar’s Kilts Wi Hae.
Meanwhile, Jade is determined to see the positives in a situation that she knows could have been worse.
“I didn’t have to see John with an illness, I didn’t have to see him suffer or in pain,” she says.
“And although I am angry that I don’t have John here to share my life with anymore, I just have to be grateful of what I did have.”
Click here to donate to Jade’s Kiltwalk for the Archie Child Bereavement Service.
