Queensland dad makes life-changing discovery weeks after wife dies from cancer

A Brisbane widow and father-of-four has revealed the surprising find he made weeks after his wife died from cancer.

Joel Hockey, 48, lost his wife Natalie, 49, to bowel cancer in June last year.

Feeling lost and desperately wanting to connect with her again, Hockey decided to read the books that were still sitting on Natalie’s nightstand beside their bed.

What he found there led him down a path he never expected.

“Three-and-a-half years ago Natalie had gone for a blood test. She’d had issues with her liver on and off since our children were born,” he said.

“That’s when she was diagnosed. She had bowel cancer that had already spread to her liver.”

Natalie initially reacted well to treatment, with Hockey saying she lived longer than doctors initially expected.

“Nat had gone to hospital, she’d been in and out of palliative care a couple of times, which is fairly common,” he said.

“But then one day, you come back home but you come back home without a person.”

After Natalie passed away, Hockey said he was left to deal with all the practical arrangements including the funeral — but once there were no more distractions, he began to feel the full weight of life without her.

“I didn’t have a lot to do at first for a long time. You take some time off work and you’re just sort of in a daze,” he said.

Several months after his wife’s death, Hockey said he struggled to find the value in his own life and even tried to sign up to a bull-riding competition at the Pine Rivers Show, despite having no experience.

“I didn’t value my own life so much. When you’ve lost someone, everything just seems meaningless,” he said.

“I was talking to one of the security guards at the gate waiting for some friends to come and I had a big cowboy hat on and she said, ‘Oh, are you doing the bull riding?’.”

Hockey said he was too late and missed the sign up, but began talking to the woman behind the desk.

“I told her my story and she said, ‘Oh, are you doing this because you hope your wife’s going to come back and stop you?’,” he said.

“I thought that was incredibly insightful.”

Back at home, Hockey struggled to bring himself to remove Natalie’s things — wanting to continue feeling close to her in some way.

That’s when he noticed the books she had left on her bedside table and began reading them.

“You miss someone so much and you’re looking for some connection to them,” he said.

“When I was reading these books, I don’t know what I was hoping for but you just sort of hope for some connection.”

Among Natalie’s books was A Doctor In Africa by Australian obstetrician Andrew Browning, detailing his work with women in Africa.

Many of the women Browning treated suffered treatable injuries from childbirth that left them incontinent, often isolating them or resulting in them being rejected from society.

“Reading the book, I was very aware that they’re often completely left alone in life,” Hockey said.

“I feel it’s very hard without my wife but these ladies, they’re doing it a whole lot harder than I am. And in some ways I identify with them, like the feelings of loneliness.”

Reading about the women and their stories, Hockey realised many had the same dreams as his wife. Dreams of having children and a family.

“I just knew how much Nat loved being a mum and so it resonated with me, I thought this is something that helped me feel a strong connection to her and something she would love,” he said.

After finishing the book, Hockey invited Browning to speak to his colleagues at Google — about his work in Africa and with the Barbara May Foundation, which aims to reduce the high incidence of death in pregnancy and childbirth.

After hearing his story, many of Hockey’s colleagues donated on the spot.

Since then, Hockey has continued to help co-ordinate a Google employee giving and charity matching program — contributing tens of thousands of dollars in donations for the charity.

Hockey said his intention is to promote the charity at his work every year and to share his story.

“Everyone wants to do something for the people they’ve lost and love and and so for me I was very pleased to see that I can help support and make an improvement for other people and feel some additional benefit for my current experience of grief,” he said.

“I have come to think that grief is just something you carry forever. Over time maybe the load gets a bit less, and your muscles for holding it get stronger.

“But grief is what is left over of the love that you have. And the love doesn’t ever go away so the bad news is that I think neither does the grief.”