Meredith Gaudreau Details How She Learned of Husband Johnny’s Death for First Time in Heartbreaking Essay

In a heartbreaking new essay, Meredith Gaudreau opens up about the “awful” and “indescribable” moment she learned that her husband, late NHL star Johnny Gaudreau, and her brother-in-law Matthew Gaudreau were killed last August.

Meredith detailed the moment as part of a Player’s Tribune essay published Thursday, June 12, which is penned to her late husband Johnny and recounts the beginnings of their relationship, their move from Calgary to Columbus and the birth of their three children.

Johnny, 31, and his brother Matthew, 29, were killed last August when an alleged drunk driver crashed into them while they were riding bicycles the day before their sister Katie Gaudreau‘s wedding.

In her essay, Meredith reveals that the Aug. 29, 2024 incident was exactly four years after the star hockey forward got down on one knee and proposed near their families’ homes in Avalon, New Jersey.

That morning before the crash, Meredith writes that Johnny made breakfast for daughter Noa, now 2, and son Johnny, now 1, and then hung out with his wife and kids before packing their car ahead of his sister Katie’s wedding. “It was going to be a great day,” Meredith recalls in her essay.

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Johnny left home to attend a golf outing with his brother Matthew and the other groomsmen in the wedding. “You kissed all of us goodbye and said you’d see us later. And that was that,” Meredith remembers.

Then, Meredith says, there was a worried call from Johnny’s sister telling her “something had happened but she didn’t know what exactly.”

“My dad drove me over to your parents’, and I was thinking the whole time about how I was going to help you through whatever it could be that had happened to Matty,” Meredith writes. “And then I walked up the front porch and learned the absolute worst had happened and that it was both of you.”

Meredith, who was pregnant at the time with her and Johnny’s third child, son Carter, 2 months, describes what happens next in heart-wrenching detail.

“I was in shock,” she recalls. “I was keeled over for days sick to my stomach. It’s completely indescribable. The only person who can relate to me is my own sister-in-law. I see her and my heart breaks for her. I’m sick for her. We had just celebrated their gender reveal. We were all just down the shore together and had so much fun. Matty made me laugh so much that weekend.”

Meredith continues: “I thought of our baby inside of me. I couldn’t stand up. I was awake and having nightmares. Thinking of you in that moment. Thinking of Matty. It’s just the worst thing I could have ever imagined. And in an instant, I missed you more than I knew was possible. And I haven’t stopped missing you since. That feeling never goes away. I’m so sorry. I love you so much. I miss you every second of every day. I miss you more and more every day as well. My love grows deeper for you each day too.”

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Meredith writes that going from “getting ready for a beautiful wedding all week with your sister, to being in a funeral home with [Matthew’s wife] Madeline trying to figure all these things out” had “just hurt so much.”

“It was weird and it was awful,” Meredith writes. “I had to go to the doctor for our third baby. The first of my appointments where you weren’t holding my hand. I looked at Noa and baby Johnny and I felt a pain that I hadn’t felt before. Our two babies who have to grow up without their dad, without their amazing uncle.”

Ultimately, Meredith finds herself at a loss for words: “I don’t know,” she writes.

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The mother of three has spent much of the past year honoring her late husband, from tributes on social media to getting a tattoo using his ashes to appearing at NHL games to leading arena-filled memorials of the late hockey star.

“Thank you for the very best years of my life,” Meredith concludes in her essay. “Thank you for making us a family. Thank you for being my best friend, my favorite person, the man of my dreams. I love you so much. Forever and ever.”