DEBBIE Rooke was only 31 when she was hit by a car while out cycling in South Raynham, Norfolk, in February 2013.

The much-loved woman, from Westcliff, who worked as a science teacher at De La Salle School, in Basildon, was on a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham at the time of the tragic accident and was cycling alone.

“As she was cycling back, an elderly man came round the bend straight into her,” says mum Joy, 62.

“She was carried on the front of the car until he hit a tree and she was thrown off – he died at the scene, while she suffered brain damage and died later.”

Joy and husband David, 64, of Beedel Avenue, Westcliff, were thrown into mourning over the freak accident, which had robbed them of their daughter, and their son Simon, 30, of a sister.

For Joy, it was difficult to know where to turn.

She says she had trouble speaking with some of the support organisations available – most of which were only available over the telephone and were staffed by people who had not been through the same experience.

“Me, my husband and son – all the family – you think you’re going to wake up and it’s back normal, but it never is,” Joy says.

“When I felt I needed a bit of help, I phoned up organisations but there were no local groups and I felt there should be somewhere to go to – counselling didn’t help because those people don’t really know how you feel.

“Having lost Debbie two years ago, although it doesn’t get better, in some ways it does get easier to cope with and eventually I felt ready to help other people cope as well.”

At the beginning of March, Joy decided to set up the Avenue Bereaved Parents Support, working out of Avenue Baptist Church, in Milton Road, Westcliff, of which she is a member, on the first Monday of each month.

It got a better response than she expected.

“We had six people at our most recent meeting,” Joy says, “which I’m impressed with because it’s not been advertised all that much.

“We’ve been getting a lot of good feedback.

“People have lost children in all sorts of different ways – illness, a tragedy like mine, suicide – sometimes it’s a long illness, but one person’s son had a heart attack and died very quickly.

“It’s been mostly adult children, too, with the youngest one being 27, though maybe that’s because people who have lost younger children get more support from the hospital or Little Havens.”

Although it is still early days, Joy says the group has already exceeded her expectations and she hopes to see the group expand into larger premises, as well as separate branches.

But it’s not just other people she is helping. She says: “It helps me too because it means I know there are other people out there like me.

“I’m not alone and I know I’m helping other people, which I know is what Debbie would have wanted.

“She was a giving person, more than I realised since she’s gone, and a lot of teachers twice her age have told us how much she helped them and the children, particularly those with special needs, to achieve.”

Debbie’s absence will always be felt by her family and those who knew her, Joy says, but with happiness as well as grief – particularly as the family grows.

“As a mother, you’ve got a bit missing,” she says.

“I had two children and now I’ve only got one.

“It was around the same time as Simon’s birthday when she died, too, which means we always remember her death when we celebrate his birth.

“But he got married shortly after and has a lovely one-yearold daughter whose name is Deborah, which is beautiful.