Today marks the 20th anniversary of the loss of Jack D’Lima, who died in 2005 aged just ten.
Jack was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour in April 1996 when he was just 15 months old. He fought a brave battle, despite several recurrences, for nearly nine years, but in 2005, yet more surgery failed to work and his devastated parents were forced to watch Jack deteriorate before their eyes.
Albert and Beverley D’Lima said: “We were not ready to say goodbye. We thought Jack would go on forever. The pain was unbearable. It had to be a mistake. We didn’t want time to heal our broken hearts.
"We didn’t want to pick up those shattered pieces and try to rebuild our lives. But we have. For our other boys we had to learn to live another day. Our numbness and disbelief may have faded, but we will never be complete again.”
His parents established Jack’s Goal, and raised more than £100,000 as an umbrella group of the charity Ali’s Dream, a founding Member Charity of Brain Tumour Research. Jack's Goal supported Ali’s Dream funding 10 research projects, the establishment of the Brain Tumour Research Centre of Excellence at the University of Portsmouth and a grant of £250,000 made in 2021 to our Centre at Queen Mary University of London for research into childhood brain tumours.
In October 2004, at the age of nine, Jack attended the first ever reception on brain tumours at the House of Commons with his mother Beverley. Our thoughts are with Jack's family and all who knew and loved him.
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