Ten years ago, Anne-Marie Cockburn’s only child died from an overdose of MDMA. She was determined it would not be the end of her own life – and that her daughter would have a positive legacy
Today, on the 10th anniversary of her daughter Martha’s death, Anne-Marie Cockburn will get married. The day will be emotional – elements of Martha and memories of her will be present, as they are every day – but joyful, too, which says so much about the way Cockburn has tried to live her life. This is an anniversary many parents might have dreaded but, she says: “It’s kind of this reworking and reshaping. But it’s all about love.”
On the afternoon of 20 July 2013, Martha Fernback, who was 15, took half a gram of MDMA, or ecstasy, and collapsed. She was at a lake near her home in Oxford with friends, and Cockburn received a call from the scene; she was told to head to A&E but Martha hadn’t yet been brought in. When she did arrive, Cockburn watched as doctors tried to save her daughter. She remembers calling to Martha in the same tone – raw and primal – that she had last heard from herself as she gave birth. Cockburn couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand. But there was also something else. “In the moment she died in the crash room, the words ‘I have a future, I have a life’ came into my head,” she says. “They were really loud, as if somebody shouted it in my ears, and I just thought: ‘How can you say this? Look at what I’m looking at.’ But that became my mantra: I have a future and I have a life.”
