Student who died in bed was 'extraordinary in so many ways'

Jed Walker lived life to the full when at Otago University.

Maybe he shouldn’t have but as his mother says ‘‘he just got unlucky.’’

Jed Walker died in his bed at his flat late last month. Aged just 19, he was diagnosed with epilepsy a couple of years ago but that would not stop him.

‘‘He loved Dunedin. Oh, he loved Dunedin,’’ his mother Belinda Walker said.

‘‘He loved the crew which came around him . . . before he went [to study in Dunedin] he said ‘‘I can’t wait to get down there. No-one will know me. It’ll be a fresh start.’’

Jed was born in the United Kingdom but the family came home to New Zealand when he was 3, and Jed attended Taupo-nui-a-Tia College in Taupo.

He was at Te Rangihīroa College for his first year after heading south and this year flatted with four friends in a flat in Clyde St.

Sadly, the finance and marketing student was found unresponsive in his bed on September 27 by a flat mate.

His mother Belinda said it was a real shock when they heard of their son’s passing but he was doing what he wanted in Dunedin.

‘‘He said I'm going to be the guy I want to be. Sadly, he just needed a couple of drinks to be that guy. He was really introverted, but he wanted to be the centre of the party, and he was.

‘‘But, unfortunately, if you're already on drugs, you can't add another drug, which is alcohol.

‘‘And, like, that's just living. And I don't know about you, but you know [husband] Darren and I for sure it's by a freak of luck that we're still here.

‘‘You know, we've all done dumb stuff when we were kids, right? All of us. And it's just luck that we're still here. And he just got unlucky, right? He did a couple of dumb things.’’

Jed was told to stay off alcohol but his mother said he didn't want to do that.

‘‘You’ve just got to live life, don't you? Well, he just, he wanted to live. But he was rolling the dice, and he was rolling the dice quite hard.

‘‘But he lived a good life. It's too short. It was short, but he was living his best life down there.’’

She said getting to Dunedin a couple of days after Jed died, she and her family were overwhelmed by the support they received from everyone, and his friends had been outstanding.

‘‘I've never seen anything like it. Often, you know, people make great friends there, and then they'll kind of go separate ways when they go second year or whatever. This group had stayed really tight.

‘‘Jed’s flat was five boys, and then two doors down, just by luck, there was like about another eight or nine. Actually, I still haven't figured out how many's in the other flat, to be honest. It was marae style, mattresses on the floor, were all sleeping in that flat for those first few days.’’

On the night the family arrived in Dunedin, an impromptu gathering took place at Jed’s flat to honour him.

At first some of the family thought it was going to be a couch burning but it was simply setting up a grandstand to hold Jed’s 21st.

They watched videos and talked of memories of Jed.

‘‘Those guys just taught us to cry and laugh and celebrate. But they have been through a lot. At that stage we didn't even know how to put one foot in front of the other, really.

‘‘And then these guys started the process for healing, I think. It's a long, long road. But those two days with the friends in Dunedin has given us a pathway forward, I think.’’

Jed had been diagnosed autistic when young and did not talk until aged 3. But by 6, he appeared fine.

Then at around year 11-12 at high school, changes started to occur, his mother said.

‘‘He was known for having fantastic hands, like cricket catchers, rugby catcher — like he really was good.

Then he started having these spontaneous droppings of the ball.

"But it wasn't like anything big. We just thought it was exhaustion, dehydration, all that stuff."

Then he played in a representative trial game and played every minute.

‘‘So he came off, and I got this photo of him and he's absolutely dazed. We thought it was exhaustion because that's a lot of rugby. But he'd actually taken a knock in the ruck right at the end of the game and didn't tell us.’’

A headache set in but he shrugged it off only to be hit by a rugby ball when he missed a high ball a week later and things began to get serious.

Examinations began and eventually the diagnosis was epilepsy.

He lived with it and seizures still arrived.

‘‘It’s tough on your body to go through a seizure. It’s like running a marathon. So it’s just by luck that he wasn’t anywhere dangerous in other seizures.’’

She said there was a bad one when coming out of Dunedin Airport last year, landing on concrete and he also had a few in bed. He had six last year and the fatal one was his sixth seizure of this year.

His neurologist told him more than two seizures and you're really up against it — the chance of death was much higher. He needed to be careful.

‘‘But he didn't want to do that. He just wanted to live.’’

Jed was the oldest of three — Leroy, 17 and Aria, 11.

He played on the wing for the under-20 University Blues side this year. He refereed basketball and played other sports. He also enjoyed theatre and drama at high school. He liked performing and was in the school musical Grease.

Last Wednesday, there was a ceremony at the crematorium in Mosgiel and a funeral was set for this Sunday at his old high school. Fundraising had been done in Jed’s Kinloch community to help his university friends to come to the ceremony.

‘‘It's going to be a celebration.  As we've said, our mantra with Sunday is come along to love ferociously, laugh loudly, and cry often. And we'll get through this.

‘‘Jed — he so desperately wanted to be an ordinary person except he was extraordinary in so many ways.’’