The daughter of a victim of the tragic 7/7 bombings has spoken about the ‘trauma’ of learning her mother had died via a BBC News update.
Azuma Wundowa was just 16 in 2005 when her mother Gladys was taken away from her, killed on her way to work after a London bus exploded.
Gladys was one of 52 people killed in the organised attacks on 7/7, with a further 770 people being injured as a result.
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Azuma spoke recently in Netflix’s new documentary Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers ahead of the 20 years anniversary of the attacks that took place this past week.
In an exclusive interview with LADbible, Azuma remembered her mother following the tragic anniversary of the terror attacks, speaking about the experience of learning she had died via the news.
Having grown up to be a business change consultant and a writer, the now 36-year-old woman has fond memories of her mum.
Speaking about Gladys, she described her as a ‘kind-hearted person’, saying that she was ‘always known for giving her last pound and slipping envelopes of money into people’s hands’.
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The weeks leading up to 7/7 had been a bizarre one for the Wundowa family, earlier that month she had been forced to return to Ghana to attend a family funeral. Just days before 7/7, their house was robbed – forcing Gladys to take several days off work.
The bomb that killed her went off on the bus she was taking to work on her first day back following the robbery. The family had not heard from her that evening, initially failing to connect the two until her father went out searching for her.
Three days later BBC News were able to name the first casualties of the bombing, with Gladys being one of the first two to be confirmed.
No one had told Azuma or anyone in her family.
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Speaking about this 20 years on, Azuma said that she understood that it was ‘unprecedented times at that point, and there may have not been the systems in place’.
She went on to add however: “I think the second fold part of that is the trauma that it's caused me and my family, not just my family in the UK but lots of my family abroad didn't even know she was missing at that point.
"I don't think that's something that leaves or has left our family, I see it in myself, even when I've read in a newspaper or see anything on the news.
"My first thought is always ‘Does their family actually know?’ So yeah, I think that it's kind of had lasting effects, to be honest.”
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Azuma has gone on to write a book from her experiences following the death of her mother titled The Dressmaker’s Daughter, focusing on the trauma that losing a family member can leave you with.
Speaking about the message she hoped people would take from the book and her experiences, she said: “What I really hope resonates with others is like not losing the learning. I think life is, unfortunately, a mixture of great things and sometimes terrible things.
“We don't get to control how that dice rolls, but I think we lose a lot, and we do a lot of damage when we don't take learning from those things.”
She went on to state that as a country we don’t think about how trauma affects those in education, saying that there is a ‘number of areas in which we could be better prepared to support people, and that, I think, is really important’.
Attack on London: Hunting the 7/7 Bombers is available to watch on Netflix now.
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The Dressmaker’s Daughter is available to buy here.
Topics: Terrorism, Netflix, Mental Health, TV and Film, TV, Documentaries, London
Michael Slavin