“We are keeping his memory alive” – memories of Jordan from Team J and his family

We have always been quite a tight-knit family, and my brother Jordan was close with all of us. There’s five of us siblings, and he was the second youngest at 25. The youngest is my sister Danika who was only ten months apart from my brother – they were both extremely close and had a beautiful bond. Then Addam is the oldest, then Craig, and I’m the middle child, Mitchell.

Jordan was diagnosed with CF at birth, and his dad has CF as well, though his symptoms are more mild than Jordan’s were. Jordan also had seven nieces and nephews – three of them are my kids, and they’re a bit of a handful!

Jordan’s life with CF

Jordan didn’t have the easiest life and spent long periods in hospital. We were always back and forth, and he struggled a lot with the mental side of dealing with CF. He despised hospitals because he’d spent so much time in them, so he did his IVs at home whenever he could. He wasn’t well enough to work and tried to be as proactive as he could, doing odd bits with his dad, but also struggled with dyslexia and ADHD. 

He was really smart and was an avid gamer. He actually got me back into gaming and built me a PC in secret to surprise me with. From then, we started gaming together - I’d get home from work and jump straight on the computer to play with him.

Jordan was a little troublemaker when we were kids. As we grew up, we got to understand CF as our parents explained it to us and we learnt from seeing him day-to-day. From the outside he was a normal boy until you saw him struggling with walking and moving. He really struggled going up and down stairs, but as an adult, he would try and hide his CF. 

Despite everything he was going through, Jordan was infectious. He had the best banter. It was funny how he came out with it – he would deliver it so seriously. It was just who he was. He was funny.

At the end, we were by his side for days and were praying for a miracle but on the sixth of November we received the news to say our goodbyes and switched off the machine on the seventh. My partner has been an amazing support to me and the family – she’s a carer so has a lot of understanding, and I’ve known her since I was eleven so she knows my family really well. The hardest part was telling my eldest daughter because her and Jordan were so close.

Keeping Jordan’s memory alive

I want to spread awareness. Too many times Jordan went very misunderstood. Nobody knew what CF was, people had heard of it, but nobody knew it. The Trust supported Jordan and CF was the biggest part of his life, but it was so hard for him as none of us really knew CF like he did. My goal now is to make sure other people with CF don’t go misunderstood.

I decided to do a charity football match in his name, because I know he would have been the only person heard above the crowd - he was the loudest in the room. At the first game we had about 150 people and raised over £1200.

We’re looking to raise over £1000 every single year now in his memory. At one point we didn’t think it would be able to go ahead – we have the venue, referee and photographer pull out. I had to scramble to pull it all together in the last 24 hours but we did it. We’re also going to have smaller games every few months to raise a bit more money on top of the big yearly match. It would be amazing to eventually have 1000 people to attend, because in the middle of each game, CF is going to be spoken about and kept in the front of people’s minds. The five year goal of the team is to be able to spread awareness of CF outside of Cambridgeshire. That’s the goal, we are keeping his memory alive.