Laura Gibbs, 34, shares her story:
My daughter Anna was dancing around the kitchen, singing at the top of her voice.
“You’ll wear yourself out!” I said, chuckling.
Like most youngsters, she was obsessed with pop music and always had the latest tunes blaring.
She had a good singing voice, too, and recorded renditions
of her favourite songs to put on YouTube.
She’d always been a confident, bubbly little girl and loved being the centre of attention. But as she got older, things changed.
By age 11, Anna was much bigger than girls her age. At first, I wasn’t too worried, I just thought it was puppy fat. But as time passed, she put on more weight.
She had child-size portions like her sisters, Chloe, 10, Sarah, nine, Leah, eight, and little brother, Presley, two. But every evening, just a couple of hours after dinner, she’d complain she was hungry.
“You can’t be!” I’d tell her.
Anna with her young siblings.
I didn’t want her to have chocolate and chips so I filled the cupboard with fruit and Weight Watchers snack bars.
But it didn’t work. She’d wolf them down and want more.
Soon she was getting bullied at school. Sometimes even strangers in the street made nasty comments.
She began spending all her spare time alone in her room.
It broke my heart.
To give her a change of scenery, Anna’s stepdad, Gary, and I suggested she could go to stay with her grandparents for a while. They lived a little way out of town.
She loved the idea. “People don’t know me there so they won’t call me fat,” she said.
She came to stay with us every weekend, and would sometimes come home for months at a time. We didn’t mind her coming and going, we just wanted her to be happy.
Then Anna developed psoriasis, a condition that left her with flaky, itchy patches of dry skin all over her body.
“Anna was determined and, with healthy eating, she lost 14kg in four months.”
Our GP said losing weight would ease her symptoms.
“I’ll help you,” I told her.
Anna was determined and, with healthy eating, she lost 14kg in four months.
“Well done!” I beamed.
But just as she was turning a corner, she went through another tough episode of being picked on at school.
She turned to food for comfort and soon she’d piled the weight back on.
By the time she was 14, she had weighed 139kg.
One night, while Anna was at her grandparents’ house, my phone rang.
“Anna’s collapsed,” her gran said, her voice trembling. “She’s struggling to breathe. The ambulance is on its way.”
Anna Sexton on right.
I was too shocked to speak.
My brother Phil and I rushed over there and found paramedics working on her.
We were all in pieces.
“What happened?” I asked her gran.
She explained Anna had just got a hard-boiled egg out of the fridge.
“She wolfed it down but then grabbed her grandad and indicated that she couldn’t breathe. I heard him call for help and when I got there, he was doing CPR.”
I couldn’t take it in.
Just then, the medics appeared with my darling girl on a stretcher. She was unconscious as they loaded her into the ambulance. Phil and I followed in the car, both of us dazed in disbelief.
She was rushed into the emergency room. I sat weeping, willing her to be okay.
Five minutes later, a doctor appeared. The look on his face said it all.
“I’m so sorry…” he began.
I fell to the floor.
I was allowed to go in and see Anna. I stroked her hair and held her hand. She looked so peaceful. I remembered back to when she’d been so full of energy and life.
How could it have come to this?
Dead because she’d eaten an egg.
I didn’t know what I was going to say to Anna’s siblings.
When I got home, Gary had already explained to them that Anna had passed away in an accident.
They were all distraught.
We huddled together on the couch, held each other and cried for hours.
In true Anna style, her funeral was a colourful affair. We organised white horses with pink feathers in their manes to pull the carriage and asked mourners to wear bright clothes.
We played two of her favourite songs – If Tomorrow Never Comes by Garth Brooks, and Sia’s Cheap Thrills.
Laura Gibbs in Anna’s memorial garden.
I would have done anything to hear her blasting those songs from her bedroom one more time.
At the inquest into her death, we heard how she’d often sneak downstairs at her grandparents’ at night and secretly eat hard-boiled eggs.
The egg she’d eaten that evening had lodged in her throat and she’d collapsed, before suffering a cardiac arrest on the way to hospital.
Anna wasn’t greedy, she just couldn’t control her eating.
I hope those who bullied her realise the damage they did to my sweet, sweet girl.
As told to Harriet Rose-Gale by Laura Gibbs.
