Margaret Wheddon feels as if it was only yesterday she got the heart-wrenching call that her son, Major Chris Wheddon, had died.

She and her husband Robert were in Ludlow, a market town in Shropshire, England, when she was woken by the telephone ringing in the early morning hours.

“My husband and I were living in the UK at the time and because Chris died in a car accident the police over there couldn’t locate his relatives,” the 73-year-old said.

“Instead they phoned the Bermuda Regiment and eventually got in touch with our other son Mark. He was the one who called us at 1am in the morning to say that Chris had passed.

“Chris had actually been to visit us a day before. It was an impromptu visit. He came on the Friday night and we took him to lunch on Saturday before we parted ways. He went one way and we went the other and that’s why his death came as such a shock. My husband collapsed right there on the floor.”

Major Wheddon had been in the UK for three months taking part in military training exercises with the British Army. The 43-year-old was en route to his next training assignment when he died in a car crash on September 9, 2012.

He was being groomed to take over as the Commanding Officer of the Bermuda Regiment.

Mrs Wheddon said she’s still coming to grips with the loss.

“At the time I couldn’t express my grief like I thought I would,” she said. “You don’t expect one of your children to die before you and it’s just something I don’t think we will ever get over.”

The family recently decided to have Major Wheddon’s name engraved on a memorial brick, which will be part of the Legacy Walkway in the new Acute Care Wing of King Edward VII Memorial Hospital.

The Bermuda Hospitals Charitable Trust has offered donor bricks to anyone who gives $1,000 and wishes to celebrate an important event or loved one or share an important community message. Donations will contribute toward the Why it Matters campaign which supports the redevelopment project costs of the hospital’s new Acute Care Wing.

The initiative, which launched in 2014, will see two more installations this year.

“We thought it would be a very nice way, another way, to remember Chris and we also felt it was a good cause,” Mrs Wheddon said.

“Chris was all about helping the community and that’s what he would have been doing for the rest of his life.

“He was a wonderful son and a wonderful father to Katherine, who was three years old when he died. Nothing was ever too much for him to do to help someone else.

“Even today people come up to us to say he was a wonderful person. I haven’t heard one person say anything bad about him and never heard him say anything bad about anyone else.”

The accident changed Mrs Wheddon’s life.

She and her husband had retired to England. They’ve since moved back to Bermuda so they can be closer to their three children and six grandchildren.

Mrs Wheddon said one of her greatest joys is watching Katherine grow up and seeing just how much her personality and mannerisms are like her dad’s.

“She talks about him all the time to me and her mom as well,” she said. “She is in no way going to forget her daddy.

“They had a very special relationship.

“He was very hands-on from the moment she was born. He would bathe and feed her. He was just besotted with her.”

Major Wheddon’s brother Julian has also noticed the five-year-old has similar qualities to her dad. “It’s quite surreal when you look at her sometimes and see him in the way she looks or thinks,” he said.

The family said they planned to bring Katherine back to her father’s tribute brick from time to time.

“We are hoping she will understand that he was bigger than just himself, that people cared about him and he was obviously a special person,” Julian said.

The Bermuda Hospitals Charitable Trust will accept orders for donor bricks through June 30. For more information visit www.bhct.bm.