The brightest star

When Olympic swimmer Brooke Hanson lost her son, Jack, at just nine months old, she couldn’t see how she would ever find joy again. But now, this proud mother of four tells Samantha Trenoweth, she is raising a family who cherish each moment and treasure every opportunity to give back.

- Samantha Trenoweth

Early morning light filtered through the bedroom window. It was a day or two before Easter 2012. Brooke Hanson opened her eyes and looked blearily around the room. Her heart ached. Three days earlier, she and her husband had lost their baby boy, Jack, after a nine-month fight for his life in neonatal intensive care.

“You wake up and you hope it’s all been a nightmare,” she remembers now. “And then you realize it hasn’t been.”

She turned to her husband, Jared Clarke, who was suffering too. “Jared had lost his mum to cancer when he was a teenager,” she explains, “so he’d battled through losing someone before, and I remember waking up and saying to him: ‘When does it ever feel better? When do you feel like you can cope with life? When does the heaviness in your heart go? My heart is so heavy, I feel as if someone is standing on top of me as I’m lying next to you in bed. When do you stop longing for one more cuddle?’

“And Jared said to me: ‘Brooke, the pain you feel now will be in your heart forever. The heaviness will get lighter and it will be easier for you to live your life, but you’ll carry a scar that you need to be proud of. That scar will remain in your heart always and it’s up to you what you want to do with that scar, and what legacy you want to leave for our little boy.’