‘That’s not dad anymore in there’: Heartbreaking moment of farewell

Her husband went out for a bike ride, and he never came home. Now fashion identity Sally Steele has revealed the heartbreaking moment she and her daughters found out he was going to die.

Sally Steele with her husband Jason.

It begins like any other Saturday morning at the Steele residence in Brisbane’s west.

Dad Jason is out on a dawn cycle with mates, Mum Sally is grateful for a lie-in after a busy week, and their teenage girls Felix and Elodie are fast asleep. However, this Saturday will be anything but ordinary.

Police arrive at the door of the low-set brick home in Kenmore about 7.15am and tell Sally to get her girls up and dressed because they all need to go to the hospital.

Jason has been in an accident.

Sally Steele. Picture: David Kelly

Sally suggests a neighbour comes over so the girls can stay in bed, but the officer shakes his head.

Reality bites as the 51-year-old brand strategist with the candy-pink hair and Scottish lilt slowly says: “Are you telling me that I am bringing my children to say goodbye to their father?”

In tears as she recalls that bitter moment – a year ago this weekend – Sally says the officer replies: “That’s the gist of it.”

Though she still can’t explain it, Sally remembers “a huge sense of calm” washing over her. “I say to the police, ‘OK, just give me a minute’,” she says.

“I feel like I’ve stepped out of my body and I say to myself, ‘OK, Sally, this is big shit. This is core memory stuff for your kids, and how you handle this is going to have ramifications’, and I don’t know where it comes from but I just think, ‘You’ve got this’.”

On the way to the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital on that fateful morning of February 5, 2022, Sally turns to her fearful and confused children, then 14 and 11.

“They know Daddy’s been hurt and I say, ‘Girls, I really don’t how this day is going to turn out and I really hope Dad will be fine, but we might not get what we’re hoping for and I just need you to know that no matter what happens here, you’re going to be OK; I’ve got you, I’ve absolutely got you’,” she says.

A family selfie taken in 2021.

“‘If this goes badly and Dad doesn’t make it, I promise you this is not going to be the defining moment in your life, when everything changes for the worse. I will make it my life’s mission that you don’t just survive this; you are going to continue to live joyfully through this’.’’

Jason Steele, a popular English-as-a-second- language teacher at the University of Queensland, never stood a chance.

Sally will learn her beloved partner of 28 years suffered a massive brain aneurysm on Pullenvale Rd, Pullenvale, while rounding a corner he’d easily taken many times before.

A cycling buddy will tell how Jason was way ahead of them but slowed down and stopped pedalling; his bike hit a grate and he was thrown on to the grass.

Friends performed CPR until paramedics arrived, and although Jason was revived
three times, the 52 year old never regained consciousness.

Two days later, allowing time for his brother Tarrant Steele to travel from Britain, Sally gave permission for Jason’s organs to be donated, along with his corneas, and skin tissue to help burns’ victims.

“Jason’s heart was still beating when we said our final goodbyes; it was just so hard,” Sally says.

What makes her story remarkable is not only her strength amid such a sudden, crippling loss, but also the way in which she has bravely – and boldly – navigated its aftermath.

Sally uses Instagram as a journal and, through her raw and frank admissions, is helping potentially thousands of people struggling with grief.

Her posts have also been noticed by a film producer, who has asked Sally to co-create a
TV series.

Sally and Jason Steele on their wedding day.

“Some people probably think, ‘Just shut up about your dead husband, we’ve had enough, thank you very much’,” Sally says, “but then I get a message from someone who’s lost their partner and they tell me I’ve helped them not feel so alone.

“I get this daily, actually, and not just from Australia but all over; internationally, people are connecting with me.”

It’s easy to see why. Sally – a former French teacher who became a high-flying film publicist before launching a fashion styling business and authoring her first book, Dare More Care Less – is a born communicator.

“Some people will silently moonwalk out of your life, never empathise or minimise your situation due to emotional baggage they are carrying – save your love, energy, time and understanding for the amazing people holding space for your grief,” she writes in a recent post.

“It’s OK to fashion a body form out of an extra duvet and pillows to have someone next to you in bed to hold when it all feels too much,” she writes in another.

And this: “At best, loss may feel like a stone in your shoe you can never dislodge. You change your walk to try to avoid it but it puts you off balance and stings intermittently. When you take off your shoes, you expect relief, but you’ve been walking on it so long it’s developed a raw patch that you can only bandage up so you can walk tomorrow.”

The year was 1994 when Sally Cunningham knocked on the door of a girlfriend’s apartment in Edinburgh and the tall, dark-haired Jason Steele answered. He was crashing at her friend’s place during the Edinburgh Festival.

Jason would later tell Sally that when he locked eyes with her on that August evening, he knew he was going to marry her.

Sally and Jason Steele at Christmas 2021.

The pair talked for hours but when Sally left, she realised she’d acted “a bit cool”.

“I had plans, and they didn’t include staying in Edinburgh,” she says.

The next morning, her friend invited her to breakfast.

“When I got to the cafe, my friend Tori (Johnston) was waiting, but so were Jason and (TV talk-show host) Graham Norton – Jason was producing a Festival FM radio program with Graham. Tori and Graham said, ‘See ya’, and I was alone with Jason, who wanted to see me again but needed some moral support; we were together from that day on.”

Sally – who was born in Glasgow but spent much of her childhood in Saudi Arabia where her engineer father Ramsay Cunningham was working – always wanted to settle overseas.

As luck would have it, so did Hong Kong-born Jason, whose British expatriate father Robert Steele was the assistant commissioner of the Royal Hong Kong Police until 1995.

Within weeks of meeting, Sally and Jason, then in their early 20s, moved to London.

By 1996, Jason was restaurant manager of the Pierre Victoire chain, while Sally was putting her French and economics degree from St Andrew’s University to use as a market analyst for Euromonitor International.

She was also waiting tables at night at Pierre Victoire, where she became firm friends with another employee, Troy Lum.

Troy, who would go on to co-found Hopscotch Films, was moving back to Australia and suggested Sally and Jason come too.

The Steeles, who married in 1998, moved to Sydney in 2001.

Sally took a marketing job with Troy, who was then at Dendy, and she was soon promoted to its national publicist.

“When Troy left to start Hopscotch (2002), he convinced me to come with him; his first film (to distribute in Australia) was Bowling for Columbine and it was such an exciting time,”
Sally says.

The Steeles could have happily remained in Sydney, but Brisbane beckoned in 2009.

Sally’s mother Ellaine Cunningham – who had emigrated with her husband after their son Ian, Sally’s older brother, also settled in Brisbane – had been battling breast cancer.

“We were travelling up and back from Sydney to be with Mum and then Jason said, ‘We need to move here’,” she says. “Our daughter Felix was a toddler, I was pregnant with Elodie, and it made sense.”

Jason, who had gained a masters in education from Stirling University in Scotland, landed a job at the University of Queensland’s Institute of Continuing & TESOL Education – a post he held until his death.

Sally Steele. Picture: David Kelly

Sally could not have contemplated any more 12-hour days in the film industry – she needed flexibility, especially as her father had by this point been diagnosed with a terminal illness.

After a few freelance marketing gigs, Sally started a mobile personal styling service called Steele My Style in 2011. It was going well, but when Sally’s father died in 2013, she really struggled.

“Mum was cancer-free after a double mastectomy, but losing Dad was awful,” she says.

“I didn’t go out for about a year – I was quietly styling people from my daughter’s school as well as kindy friends – but I was using Instagram to market myself.

“Then I got a call from Myer to organise a styling workshop in Queen St Mall, and I thought, ‘If I am going to make a go of this, I really need to get out of the house’.”

Sally hasn’t worked since Jason’s death, devoting the past year to being fully available for their daughters, but she plans to ease back into freelancing in the near future.

The night before Jason died, he made his family a delicious chicken pie, decorating the top with little pastry hearts.

Sally was exhausted after working five long days on a Sunsoaked swimwear campaign.

“I didn’t see much of Jason that week because I was producing the shoot, but he was so beautiful,” she says with a smile.

“I was desperate to chat to him and hang out but I was so tired, and he said, ‘Babe, don’t worry about it, we’ll have a really low-key weekend, go to bed’.”

Sally had plenty on her mind – that afternoon she had received news from her doctor following an MRI scan.

“I had bad eye pain, and I discovered I had a pituitary gland tumour,” she says (the tumour is small and now being managed).

“That night it was so hot and I was lying awake, worrying about finding a good neurologist, and then I heard Jason’s voice in the dark.

“‘It’s all going to work out, babe, I promise you.’ I turned on my side to go back to sleep and he put his hand on my bum and I said, ‘Is that meant to be comforting?’ and he said, ‘Well, it is for me’ and we had a chuckle.”

The next time Sally woke, the police were at her door.

“The doctors said he really fought to come back to us,” Sally says as tears fall.

About 9.30am on February 5, Sally took her daughters to see their dad in the RBWH emergency ward, preparing them that he was going to look a “bit beaten up”.

“Felix said, ‘That’s not Dad any more, he’s not in there’,” she says.

“She squeezed his hand and said, ‘That’s the first time Dad hasn’t squeezed me back’.”

“Elodie found it too confronting. She came in for a minute and then said, ‘It’s too much, Mamma’.”

By 4pm, with the girls being cared for by friends, Sally was told her husband could not survive such a “catastrophic event” and was asked if she wanted to tell her daughters.

“I said, ‘No, they’ve been through enough today, let’s give them tonight’ and I was waiting for Jason’s brother to get here.”

Sally and Jason Steele in 1994.

Tarrant arrived on Sunday morning, and after he sat with Jason and spoke to doctors, said, “We’re talking organ donation now, yeah?”

“We were lucky,” Sally says, “because Jason and I had already had that conversation. It was a no-brainer for us, and I said to the team, ‘Take whatever you can use’.’”

The next step was agony.

“I brought the girls into the hospital, I was crying and said to the doctor, ‘I need you to help me do this.’ F--k, and then I had to tell them, and that’s the worst. Just seeing that light go out – as a parent, you tell your children everything is going to be OK – but then this happened.

“I’ve thought about it so much since, and sometimes I think, was I so smug that I thought we were untouchable? We all just loved each other so much; Jason and I were such a great team.

“Things during Covid were hard for us, his faculty temporarily closed (because of the absence of foreign students), but we kept saying, ‘We can get through this’, and then you go, ‘Oh, we’re those people, we’re the people you read about, we’re one of those families now – the unimaginable is now our reality.’ And that happened really f--king quickly on an otherwise ordinary Saturday morning.”

At 2am on Monday, Sally received a call from the hospital to say a match had been found for Jason’s heart.

“That was amazing,” she recalls. “It was only the second heart they’d had that year. The man was on his way to the Princess Alexandra Hospital for the transplant when they phoned. Jason’s heart is now beating in Brisbane in a father of four.”

The day Jason died, Sally’s good friends in Sydney – actor Nash Edgerton and wife Carla Ruffino – started a GoFundMe account to help the family.

“I didn’t know anything about it, but it was so kind of them, and it raised over $40,000, which allowed us to stay afloat until Jason’s life insurance came through months later,” Sally says.

After the insurance sum cleared, Sally decided to pay it forward.

Sally Steele, pregnant with Felix, in Sydney in 2006.

In July, she attended a fundraiser to support Hannah’s Sanctuary, a free housing initiative by Beyond DV in partnership with Small Steps 4 Hannah.

“Beyond DV is building free transitional housing for women coming out of domestic violence situations, and Small Steps 4 Hannah is providing the furnishings for the houses,” Sally says.

“When they told me how much it would cost to furnish one house, I thought, ‘Well, I can do that, and pay forward the help I’ve had to another woman and her children rebuilding their lives’.”

Remarkably, Sally says she doesn’t hold any anger about Jason’s death.

“I don’t feel like this is so unfair, I’ve never felt that,” she says. “People say grief is like this, and it’s not.

“I’ve never gone through the five stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance).

“Grief is not a thing outside of me, it’s actually everything that I am, it forms part of every way I handle things now, whether emotional, physical, mental, or financial.

“It’s about how to deal with feeling insecure, when there’s not that special someone in your corner any more.”

Many social situations continue to feel “excruciatingly painful” for Sally.

“Actually, I think I would be OK if I didn’t have to interact with institutions and organisations like banks and insurance companies, and random people coming up and going, ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your husband – was he sick, what age was he?’” Sally says.

“All this morbid curiosity makes you guarded and I wish people would just back off. Unless I know people really, really well, it makes interactions hard because you feel embarrassed; you don’t want to break down in the middle of somewhere.

“I used to go to a post office in a completely different suburb so there was no way some random mum from school or ballet was going to tap me on the shoulder and say, ‘I know exactly how you feel because I’m divorced.’

“Someone said to me just before Christmas, ‘How’s your year been?’, and they know me, and I said ‘Pretty shitty, but we’re getting through,’ and they said, ‘Oh yes, of course, but apart from that?’”

Recently, she was in an Uber and the driver overheard her conversation with a friend and said, “You really should get remarried within two years or your teenage girls will go off the rails.”

“Enough is enough,” Sally says. “Our culture needs to find a way to allow people to feel grief better. Everyone’s experience is different.

“I realised about six weeks in that losing Jason is another level entirely to losing my dad.

“This is your person, the one who chose you, who basically made you feel OK about yourself when you were out in the world, and now I’ve got to work this out by myself, all the plans we made, the future we had, it’s not a shared future any more – this is like, all on me.”

Despite her immense loss, Sally feels grateful.

Jason Steele loved cycling.

“I had what a lot of people never have,” she says. “I got to be loved by someone who saw me, who encouraged all my harebrained ideas, who thought I was the most fabulous person ever. I’m just sorry Jason didn’t get to spend longer. He was very conscious about finances and we lived simply, always with an eye on the future and giving our girls the best experiences we could.

“He was always the dad at the eisteddfod handing out the Snakes (lollies); he was really smart, funny and could talk to anyone; one friend said, ‘Jason was the person you hoped was sitting next to you at a dinner party.’

“Another thing that kept coming up after he died was that Jason taught men how to be better fathers. On a Friday when colleagues were heading off to drinks, Jason never went. He was unapologetic about wanting to hang out with his family, and it made some people ask themselves, ‘Why am I not going home?’

“We did everything together, we learned to rollerblade and to surf as a family, and Jason was teaching the girls to cook. I miss him terribly.”

Inside the front door of their Kenmore home, Jason’s shoes are in the usual spot – on a rack with Sally’s, Felix’s and Elodie’s.

“It’s stupid,” Sally says, “but I keep them where he’d put them because, I’m like, when he comes home he will need to find his shoes. Maybe if I keep his shoes there, he will come home, you know?”

donatelife.gov.au

Sally Steele. Picture: David Kelly

SALLY STEELE’S GRIEF TIPS

1. Never accost someone in public

If someone who is battling grief is doing errands (shopping, banking, posting letters), understand that these tasks – and being out in the world – are the hardest times and take enormous amounts of energy to “hold it together”.

Do not try to interact with them unless you are a close friend. Just smile and say “hi” and keep moving, then you can follow up with a text or social media message saying you are sorry to hear about their loss and offer help if you want.

If you don’t have their number or are not friends on social media, don’t bother. You are not connected. The grieving person doesn’t need to know how you feel about their loss.

2. Avoid morbid curiosity

Asking someone questions such as how he died, what age he was, was he sick, did he have life insurance, and was it because of Covid – these things are none of your business.

Instead, say: “I’m so sorry – there are no words – that is just terrible” or “I really don’t know what to say – but I am so, so sorry,” and leave it at that.

3. Never send this text message: ‘If you need anything, just let me know’

Expecting a bereaved person to identify what they need is extra emotional labour that they just have no energy for.

Instead, make genuine, specific offers, such as “I would like to help – I’m going to drop off dinner this week – any allergies or dislikes?”, “I can pick up X every Wednesday after school; would that be helpful?”, or “We can pop round and mow your lawn/weed this weekend – no interaction necessary – would that help?”

Sally and Jason Steele in 2019.

4. Don’t compare it to something in your own life, unless you are a widow or lost your father at the same age.

People say, “I know how you feel – my dog died this year,” or “My husband was seriously ill in hospital so I have a sense of what it feels like,” or “I just got divorced so I know how it feels.”

Instead, say something like: “I can’t pretend to know how it feels but I am really sorry you are going through this and I am here for you.”

5. Practical things to help

● Vouchers for online food ordering or seeing a movie – treating the kids and not worrying about the money softens bad days.

● Single-serve food in disposable containers. Having to wash and return pots or containers adds extra labour and stress – and mostly, no one feels hungry or like eating the same thing.

● Friends nominating themselves to focus on one part of your life (getting you to medical appointments, being a school buddy, helping with extra-curricular transport).

● Overseas friends making themselves available for a chat in the middle of the night – the worst times.

● Friends doing regular garden and house maintenance – it helps them grieve too.