With one hand on her bump, Georgina Klotzbach carefully lowered herself into the car beside her husband Jonathan and smiled at their daughter Dolly in the back seat. Then they pulled away from the hospital and headed home.

The couple had just come from a scan appointment and, with only days to go, had been busy preparing for their baby’s arrival.

But an hour into the journey, everything changed.

‘Jonathan was driving and I was texting my eldest daughter,’ recalls Georgina, now 40. ‘When I looked up, we were drifting across the road. I shouted Jonathan’s name but he didn’t respond. Then I screamed, panicked, as I realised we were about to crash.’

Jonathan, 49, had lost consciousness at the wheel before their car veered into a tree on the highway at approximately 70mph, minutes from home. Georgina’s memories of the accident are patchy.

She remembers the seat belt tight around her neck, the pain, the desperation and the silence.

‘Someone must have called for help because, suddenly, a fireman was cutting my seatbelt. I was lifted out and when I eventually heard Dolly cry, I was relieved she was OK.

‘Then I remember hearing someone shout, “The driver’s deceased”. In that moment, my heart broke.’

Georgina was airlifted to hospital and Dolly to another.

To doctors’ disbelief, Georgina’s unborn baby was unharmed and would need to be delivered before long because Georgina had suffered a shattered pelvis in the accident.

She was closely monitored and the following day, she gave birth by emergency C-section to a girl, Posie Jonty Luella.

‘The doctors waited till the next day to do the caesarean,’ says Georgina. ‘They said they didn’t want Jonathan’s death and our baby’s birth to share the same date.

‘It made sense but I was too numb and in shock to feel anything else. There was just too much happening for me to process. I’d faced two extremes, death and birth, in such a short space of time.

‘The worst part is that Jonathan never got to meet Posie. I had told him I was pregnant on Father’s Day. I handed him the test and he was so happy. But he never got the chance to be a father to her.’

To this day, Georgina doesn’t know exactly why Jonathan lost consciousness while driving. He had been a fit, healthy man with no previous health conditions.

There was an autopsy, but she has not yet been able to bring herself to read the results.

‘The details don’t seem to matter,’ she tells me from her home in Brightlingsea, Essex.

‘What matters is that he’s gone.’

Her devastation at becoming a widow and a mother again within the same 24 hours was compounded by a policeman entering the hospital room, demanding answers.

‘He asked me, “Did he kill himself? Were you arguing? Did you grab the wheel? Was he trying to kill you?”’ says Georgina.

‘I didn’t say a word, numb. I was surprised by his questioning, but I didn’t feel angry or upset. I’d already told myself I couldn’t cry because if I did, I wouldn’t be able to stop.’

Thankfully, the line of questioning didn’t go any further.

‘His suggestion was ridiculous. Jonathan was the most gentle, loving family man who was looking forward to adding to our bustling family with our new baby.’

Theirs was a chance, thoroughly modern meeting. Both single parents to four children – Jonathan a widower and Georgina separated – they had got ‘chatting’, not through a dating app, but via a group on a video game their children were playing. ‘We made each other laugh and chatted about the chaos of having four kids each,’ recalls Georgina.

Soon the conversations moved from chatrooms to texts, then Facetime. Despite living more than 4,000 miles apart, with Georgina in the UK and Jonathan in Florida, they were soon talking daily.

‘I’d never experienced a connection like it,’ she says.

They began sending each other care packages. Georgina sent British items such as tea and biscuits, while Jonathan sent canned cheese and they spoke about meeting.

Months later, in June 2019, Jonathan was planning a trip to Scotland, where his daughter was going to university, so they decided to meet in person.

‘I’ll never forget it,’ she says. ‘He was waiting at Stansted airport. He looked so tall and ran over to give me the biggest hug.’

The next day Jonathan, a software engineer, told Georgina they would be together forever. And after a ten-day-long ‘date’, she believed it.

Just five weeks later, Georgina and her children flew to Florida to visit Jonathan.

‘He proposed to me with an amazing diamond ring,’ she says. ‘And we got married on the beach.’

In December that year, Jonathan emigrated to England with his three youngest children to be with Georgina, blending their two families.

‘We rented what used to be an old people’s home in Colchester, Essex. It was huge, perfect for all eight children. Jonathan was such a great dad to them all. Living together as a family of ten was absolute chaos, with the youngest at the time being six and the oldest 18.

‘I remember someone saying that if you couldn’t hear our accents – British and American – you’d never know whose child was whose. We just blended so well.’

In early 2020, they were thrilled to discover Georgina was pregnant. That same year, they renewed their vows so family could celebrate with them and, in December, they welcomed a daughter.

‘As soon as Dolly was born, Jonathan doted on her. She had him wrapped around her little finger.’

By 2023, Georgina, working as a florist at the time, was expecting again. The news came as a surprise – the couple hadn’t planned another baby on top of their brood of nine.

In January 2024, when Georgina was eight months pregnant, Jonathan found them a rental home in Upstate New York. Although he worked remotely, they had decided that leaving the UK to be in the same time zone as his head office would open up more opportunities.

‘My one condition was that our home couldn’t be in the middle of nowhere, but it was, and the hospital was an hour-and-a-half away. But it was a huge, beautiful house and I found a church and a lovely library nearby.’

On February 6, 2024, Jonathan, Georgina, and their two-year-old daughter Dolly made the long drive to the hospital for the final scan. Doctors discussed the possibility of inducing her and then sent her home, saying to expect a phone call with an induction date later that week.

‘We usually stopped for breakfast after my appointments but, this time, Jonathan went straight to the car and strapped Dolly in. Then we set off.’

It was the journey that changed everything. When Jonathan fell unconscious at the wheel, the car smashed head-on into a tree on the opposite side of the road.

Hours after the fatal crash, Georgina lay alone in a hospital room, her bump black and bruised, unsure whether her unborn baby had survived, how Dolly was doing or how her other children were at home.

A nurse wheeled in a sonogram machine and the room held its breath. ‘It was the longest three minutes’ silence before we heard a whooshing heartbeat and I burst into tears,’ she recalls.

‘I was contracting, as if going into labour, but I couldn’t feel it because the impact had shattered my pelvis. Then a doctor said they needed to deliver the baby but would wait for tomorrow. I simply agreed to everything the doctors said, numb.’

Later, a nurse appeared with Dolly.

‘She sat on my bed in a tiger hospital gown very quietly. She’d never been apart from me or Jonathan and was in shock.

It was a comfort to see her before she was taken home to her siblings, plus my dad and stepmum who’d flown over.’

The next day, Georgina was wheeled into theatre for the emergency C-section.

‘A midwife asked if she could be my birth partner and take photos. I agreed, but longed for Jonathan’s hand to hold as our baby was brought into the world. My whole body was trembling, too shocked to feel anything else. A nurse placed Posie, wrapped in a towel, on to my chest and I stared in disbelief at her little red, crying face.

‘Jonathan may not have been there to meet her, but I knew he’d played his part in protecting her.

‘For an hour-and-a-half after the crash everyone had thought she was dead. But, just like Dolly, she was unharmed.’

A friend flew over to help care for Posie as Georgina was transferred to another hospital for surgery to repair her pelvis. After ten days away, Georgina returned home in a wheelchair with Posie.

‘I loved seeing the kids but was haunted by images from the accident and felt empty with grief. I still needed help caring for Posie and had to relearn how to walk.

‘I wasn’t sure I had any strength left, but days later, I managed to haul myself to the toilet with a frame. A week later, I shuffled to our mailbox outside. With every step, I imagined Jonathan cheering me on. Without that, I couldn’t have done it.’

Jonathan was cremated and his ashes kept in an urn at home. ‘Afterwards, the world kept moving, even though I didn’t want it to. The grief was suffocating, a bit like drowning.

‘It was ugly and raw, and I had no clue who I was any more, other than a wife with no husband. I was just a half.’

In May 2024, with no permanent place to stay, Georgina said goodbye to Jonathan’s children, who went to live with their grandmother, while she and her six children returned to the UK.

‘It was absolutely devastating to leave Jonathan’s children,’ says Georgina.

‘The whole thing felt surreal. We left half our family behind.’

She adds: ‘But I am grateful for the life Jonathan and I shared, the babies we made and the family we blended. I’m grateful he held my hand and told me he loved me as many times as he did. I’m grateful for the times he sang to me when I couldn’t sleep and the nights we chose to stay awake talking and laughing.’

Georgina is in regular contact with Jonathan’s children – they have visited each other and there are more visits planned.

She talks about Jonathan daily, especially to Dolly, now three.

‘I’ve told Dolly her daddy lives in the sky now, and that he can see us but we can’t see him. He sends her feathers, rainbows and sometimes in the evening, paints the sky pretty colours.’

Posie turned one in February and she is the only one of Georgina’s children who has brown eyes, just like Jonathan.

‘It feels so cruel that Posie’s life started when Jonathan’s ended, but she’s our sunshine after the storm. She’s so joyful, you can’t help but smile when you’re around her,’ says Georgina.

‘It’s not fair that her birthdays are shadowed with sadness, but if this year has taught me one thing, it’s that grief and joy can coexist.’