In August 2024, NHL player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew Gaudreau died after being struck by a driver while cycling. It was the day before their sister Katie Gaudreau was supposed to get married. And in a new essay, Johnny’s wife, Meredith Gaudreau, wrote that Johnny died on the four-year anniversary of their engagement, and about a week after Meredith told Johnny that they were expecting their third child together.
In the essay, Meredith shared some of her favorite memories of her late husband, whom she describes as her “dream guy,” and opened up about the moment in which she learned of his death.
Meredith described sharing her pregnancy news with Johnny.
At the brothers’ joint funeral on September 9, 2024, Meredith revealed that she was pregnant while delivering her late husband’s eulogy. She had shared the news with Johnny a week before his death. In her essay for The Players’ Tribune, she recalled a conversation with Johnny’s sister Katie. Katie had suspected that Meredith was pregnant again, but not wanting to share the news with anyone yet, Meredith insisted that she wasn’t. Johnny happened to overhear the conversation and asked Meredith about it later.
Addressing Johnny directly in her essay, she wrote, “You knew me so well and when I was lying. I looked at you, and your face went from pure shock to beaming again to disbelief to pure shock and beaming again.”
She recalled her husband saying, “Three??? Are we nuts?? You’re nuts, you know that!?” Meredith felt “scared,” but Johnny made her feel like “it was going to be OK.” This conversation occurred on August 22, 2024.
A week later, they celebrated the anniversary of their engagement.
On August 29, 2024, Meredith “walked into the kitchen and said, ‘Hey, today’s the day. August 29. Four years ago.'” It had been four years since Johnny had proposed to her. Their family “all just hung out that morning,” and Meredith had every reason to think that “it was going to be a great day.”
After all, it was the day before Katie’s wedding.
But later that day, Katie called Meredith.
Something was wrong, but Meredith didn’t know what. “Katie called, and she said something had happened but she didn’t know what exactly,” Meredith wrote. “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.”
However, when she arrived, she “walked up the front porch” and “learned the absolute worst had happened and that it was both of you.”
The moment she found out is indescribable, as are the days that followed. “I was in shock,” she wrote. “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.”
Meredith’s sister-in-law was also pregnant at the time of the brothers’ deaths.
Like Meredith, Matthew’s wife, Madeline Gaudreau, welcomed a child after her husband’s death. While reading her late husband’s eulogy at the brothers’ funeral, she said, “For anyone that knows Matty knows he was born to be a dad. The moment we found out about our son Tripp, it consumed his every day. He was downloading apps, ordering books, finding the best diaper brand, making sure I had the best vitamins and asking for tips from John.”
Reflecting on Madeline’s situation in her recent essay, Meredith wrote, “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.”
She acknowledged how “weird” and “awful” everything felt. “To go from getting ready for a beautiful wedding all week with your sister, to being in a funeral home with Madeline trying to figure all these things out — it just hurt so much,” Meredith said.
