Suzanne & Annabelle’s Story

The navy veteran and community liaison officer with Brain Link, was visiting patients at Melbourne’s Epworth hospital when she bumped into Josh Chalmers.

The 31-year-old Afghanistan veteran was receiving treatment for a brain tumour.

Suzanne knew Josh’s wife Annabelle, so she stopped for a chat.

‘Afterwards Josh told me how much he’d enjoyed speaking with her,’ Annabelle recalls, ‘they chatted about defence and Josh said they “spoke the same language’’. Suzanne really lifted his spirits.’

On the face of it, Josh was his usual cheeky self when Suzanne saw him, but he was in fact gravely ill and two weeks later she received the heartbreaking news that he’d passed away.

In that split-second, Suzanne made two decisions that would not only change her life, but also the life of Josh’s young widow who was heavily pregnant with the couple’s first child.

‘I called Legacy, then I called Annabelle. It was just instinct,’ Suzanne says, ‘I was a similar age and also a young mum when my husband Frederick died. Fred was a veteran too, and also died of a brain illness, so I saw myself in Annabelle, her situation mirrored mine.
‘I knew what she needed and how we could help, but more importantly, I wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone, that there was a whole defence and veteran family ready to wrap our arms around her.’

To onlookers in the Melbourne café where the pair now regularly meet, the two women chatting over coffee could be sisters or long-time friends catching up, there are a little laughter, the odd tear and a genuine sense of affection but, Suzanne and Annabelle are in-fact the faces of Australia’s contemporary widow community, and they have formed a unique bond in the shadow of loss.

Suzanne has been a guardian Angel to me, I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done without her.

Defence blood runs deep through Suzanne Shaw’s veins.

She was raised in a family who served in the Army and Air Force and when it came time for her own career there was no-doubt she’d follow in the family’s military footsteps, however she broke rank and joined the Navy.

‘I loved the Navy, absolutely loved it, the best years of my life!’ she says.

It was while working in Stores Victualling at HMAS Lonsdale, that she met Leading Seaman Frederick Shaw. Fred served in the Navy for twelve years and was a radio operator aboard HMAS Sydney, deploying and repatriating troops to and from the battle fields of Vietnam.

He swept the young WRAN off her feet and on July 1, 1978, six months after they first met, they were married.