For Sue Hammond, writing about the grief of losing her son Tom to a brain tumour – as well as losing her husband Jeff and father David in the space of the same 12 months – has been a way of making it more manageable. Not that the pain will ever completely go away.

Sue’s eyes fill with tears as she sits at home in Tavistock, talking about how she lost Tom when he was just 30. At her side is daughter-in-law Jess, Tom’s wife.

Playing in the garden is Jess and Tom’s daughter Poppy, three. He also left behind his son Josh, from an earlier relationship, aged ten.

Sue, who has lived in Tavistock for more than 40 years, has just written a memoir of grief, also telling the life stories of her dad David and her husband Jeff, a police superintendent who she met when she herself joined the police – ‘I married the boss,’ she explains with a smile. Jeff died of pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2019, just weeks before the family found out that the benign brain tumour Tom had lived with since the age of 19 had turned malignant. He died in April the following year. Because of the covid lockdown restrictions, Poppy could only see her dad through a window at St Luke’s Hospice, where he spent his final days.

‘Tom just made his birthday; we did a surprise party for him here,’ said Sue. ‘He wasn’t walking very well because he had lost the feeling down one side of his leg and the left side of his face so his smile was all lopsided. But he managed to dance. He just joked the whole way through, he was always smiling, he never complained, he never got upset about it.’

She tried counselling after Tom died but it did not help. Finding herself relying too much on alcohol, she felt there must be a better way to cope. So she started tapping away on the keyboard, putting down her memories of Tom, her husband Jeff and her dad David, who died aged 90, a week after Tom’s death.

‘It started off as a bit of a journal, getting my feelings out and all of a sudden I thought I would turn into a book,’ she said. ‘It is about the three deaths but it is about their lives as well, what they did, what Tom got up to and the happiest day of his life when he married Jess and there are some pictures in there as well. I did it on and off. Sometimes I could only write one sentence, around Tom. When it got to the funny little anecdotes it was easier, but it was writing about Tom, about when I knew I was going to lose him, that was so hard.’

All proceeds from the book will go to charity Brain Tumour Research. spokeswoman Liz Fussey said the charity were ‘really grateful’ to Sue.

‘It is a lovely tribute to the son she lost and will help to raise funds for research to find more effective treatments for brain tumours and ultimately a cure so that families don’t continue to be devastated by brain tumours,’ she said. Brain tumours kill more people under 40 than any other cancer.

Sue says Tom had headaches and was often sick as a child but GPs told her and her husband that he had a migraine. ‘This is where I will never forgive myself, for not pushing for an MRI scan,’ said Sue. ‘The book is to make other parents aware, don’t just be fobbed off by doctors.

‘If your child is got headaches and is constantly being sick there is something wrong. It is just an MRI scan, that is what you need, and then they can pick it up earlier. I just want other parents to be aware.’

Dark Days by Sue Hammond is available on Amazon.