A HEARTBROKEN Rutherglen mum has told of her unimaginable pain as she faced every parent's worst nightmare - the death of a child. 

Claire Haughey has opened up on the tragedy of losing her son Charlie almost one year on since her world was turned upside down. 

Charlie was just days away from his 21st birthday and on holiday with friends in Amsterdam when he was found dead in his bed last July. 

Now, Scotland's health minister and Rutherglen MSP has told of the day which changed her life forever. 

READ MORE: SNP minister Clare Haughey's son dies while on holiday

Ms Haughey and husband Paul were enjoying day out at the Merchant City Festival when they received the call every parent dreads. 

Ms Haughey told Holyrood Magazine: “Even then, the alarm bells didn’t go off because I have a really good relationship with the local cops and if there’s any kind of major incident in Rutherglen, they tend to let me know. 

“They asked where we were and said they wanted to speak to me – now.

“I asked what was wrong. I think I asked that several times, before they said they wouldn’t tell me on the phone.

“When they said that, I immediately panicked and asked, ‘Is it my son?’ They said it was and that they were coming to meet me.

“Waiting on them was probably one of the longest 20 to 25 minutes of my life." 

She continued: "My oldest son was in town, so I had phoned him in a panic saying, something has happened to Charlie, but I didn’t know what.

“I said I would call him back when I knew but about five minutes later, he messaged me back saying ‘Michael’s in the police car with them’.

“So, at that point, you just start bargaining with yourself…let it just be he’s been in an accident…he’s been arrested…he’s unconscious…he’s in hospital…he’s in trouble…

“All of those things, any of those things, just let it be that, let it be that. Honestly, I didn’t even let it cross my mind that he could be dead, I wouldn’t let it, it was something that I couldn’t even consider, I wasn’t going to go there...not yet.

“I had literally just had a sip of my beer when I got that call and Paul and I just left, just got up from the table and left our drinks. God knows what other people thought of these two people who had just left their table and were pacing up and down Bath Street.

“When the police arrived, they got us in the car and almost immediately told us that Charlie was dead and at that point my world fell apart.

“I could see Paul hunched over, just broken, in pieces. Michael was in the middle of the back seat of the police car and he just pulled his T-shirt up over his face and cried." 

Clare, who worked as a mental health nurse for 20 years before going in to politics, faced the agony of breaking the news to close family.

“The police didn’t really know anything at that stage other than Charlie was dead and we had to tell family without really knowing any details," she said. "I called my mum and dad and got them to come over so I could tell them.

“And then obviously, news cascaded through the family. But we still didn’t know what had really happened, they couldn’t tell us anything because they just didn’t know.

“Luckily, one of his friends who had been with him in Amsterdam phoned and spoke to Michael that evening and I then spoke to him and got a bit more detail, but essentially they had woken up and found him dead in his bed.”

Charlie's death was officially deemed a cardiac arrest and Ms Haughey says she has taken comfort in being able to bring him home and lay him to rest. 

She said: “The initial thing was just to get him home, that was my focus, and then when we got him home, it was about planning a funeral. So, there’s this focus there at the start that keeps you occupied with things to do, busy, busy…

“When I got to see him in Amsterdam, he’d only passed away two days before so he really did look like he was asleep and I remember thinking how grateful I was to the people that must have cleaned him up so nicely given he’d had been staying in a hostel, because his fingernails had never been as clean since he was a little boy.

“And you know, in the circularity of Charlie’s life the day that we brought him home and we closed his coffin was also his 21st birthday so, the first day I saw him was the 9th of August and the last day that I saw him was the 9th of August.

“I’m talking about it now to you like I can articulate the words, but the emotions behind that are still so raw.

“You take your comforts in small things; I know what happened, I know it wasn’t a deliberate act, I got to see him, I got to bring him home, I got to give him a funeral, I know where he is. I don’t have those unanswered questions that a lot of parents have when loved ones die abroad.

“You take small comforts from the things that you could do in a really awful, awful situation and you try and rebuild.

“As you say, it is every mother’s worst nightmare. A friend of mine, one of my staff, she’s a friend too, her friend lost her daughter the week before Charlie. She suddenly just collapsed with one of these congenital cardiac conditions and I had said to her the day before, that I didn’t know how she was coping, I mean how do you deal with that? And then 24 hours later I was dealing with it, and you don’t know how you are dealing with it.

“Inner strength is probably the wrong word, it’s like survival, even at a time when you really don’t want to survive, but you somehow get through it and you are still here. I’ve got Paul and I’ve got the boys and I need to keep going for them.

“I read in the papers, probably about six months ago, about a case down in Manchester, I think, about a woman whose house had burned down in an arson attack and her four kids died and the week after the sentencing she’d killed herself and you just think ‘yeah, I can relate to that,’ you really can relate to that.

“I was never suicidal and never thought about killing myself but if I hadn’t woken up in the morning you know it wouldn’t have mattered."

Ms Haughey admits the family still speak about Charlie every day and she says he was a "genuinely warm, friendly boy". 

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She said: “He was a really, really, lovely young man. You know how you hear people talk about their children dying and they’re like ‘oh, he was just an angel’ and all that stuff, and I used to look at Charlie and think, I’ve got one of them, I have an angel because he just was the perfect child.

“He was so friendly with everyone, so loving, very chatty, very engaging, he could go in and work a room of adults when he was like three, you know, going in talking and chatting, being charming and they would say,  ‘oh, he’s lovely’, and actually, he never really lost that.

“He was just a genuinely warm, friendly boy and he was always the one to come and give you a hug.

“He knew he was loved."