A mum-of-three who lost her husband in a diving accident found love at a bereavement group - only to face tragedy again.

Now, Rosie Gill-Moss is on a mission to help other young widows navigate their grief, as Ruth Cassidy reports.

It's 2018, and mum-of-three Rosie Gill-Moss is bathing her children while bemoaning her husband for not being home in time to help.

She's cursing under her breath when there's a knock at the door; the moment she says her family's life was "blown apart".

It's the police, and they've arrived at the family's Faversham home to tell Rosie her husband of 10 years, Ben Moss, did not resurface from his scuba dive that morning.

The doting father, whose youngest child was just six months old at the time, had set out on March 12 to explore the site of the sunken SS Loanda.

But it is believed he never made it to the shipwreck four miles off the coast of Dover, having vanished just moments after entering the water.

Despite desperate searches by specialist diving teams, helicopters and lifeboat crews, the body of the 42-year-old has never been found.

Rosie explained: “He went off to dive that morning and I thought nothing of it. Even though by the time it was the kids' bath time I hadn’t heard anything from him, I wasn’t really concerned.

“I was quite cross actually, as most wives would be. I was thinking ‘bloody hell, why am I doing this on my own?’.

“At about 7 o’clock, just as I was starting to get a bit worried - but still really thinking he’d lost his phone or gone to the pub - the door knocked.

“I went to shut the dog into the living room and in the time it took me to do that, I’d registered it was uniformed police officers at my door.

“I had my baby in my arms, she was wrapped in a towel just out the bath, and these two terrified-looking young police officers were standing on my doorstep.

“I think at this point, you know. You know that your world is about to be blown apart.

“Weirdly, the dive still hadn’t crossed my mind at this point and I was worried he’d crashed the van.

“Then they told me he’d gone into the water and he’d not come back up again.

“I was sick. I made a noise that I’ve never made before or since and then I had to tell the children why the police were there.”

That night, Rosie stayed up watching the moon and wondering if the man she had been in love with since university was out there fighting for his life.

But by the morning, Rosie says she had lost all hope, knowing he had been lost in the freezing English Channel for almost 24 hours.

In the difficult months that followed, Rosie found the support available for widows didn't much suit her, having experienced the loss of her husband aged just 35 - much younger than most.

Rosie, now 40, says she struggled with people's reactions and expectations of her grief.

“I felt very exposed," she said.

"Throughout the next year or so I felt constantly under scrutiny by friends and even family.

“You don’t become a different person when you are widowed, you are still a human being but you are a bit of a social pariah.

"People don’t want to invite you out because they don’t know what to say to you.

“When the dust settles initially and you have the strength to stick your head above the parapet, you have no idea who you are or where you belong any more.

“You have these two polarising stereotypes of widow, you have the woman shrouded in black, who will never leave the house or even laugh and will certainly never love again.

“Or you have the image of the harlot, and I was very aware when I did start a new relationship that I would be scrutinised.

“If you’d said to me even a year after Ben died that I would meet somebody, fall in love and get married again I honestly would have laughed in your face because I was fully prepared in those early days to be completely alone for the rest of my life."

A turning point came when she found WAY (Widowed and Young) and met others who had lost their romantic partners before their time.

“It was at that point I met my network," she said.

"I found my tribe, people who understood my experience. It was also where I met my husband, Jon.”

Jon, who Rosie refers to as her “alive” husband, had lost his wife Sarah to cancer and was adjusting to life as a single parent to young daughter Holly when he joined support group WAY.

After becoming friends, Rosie and Jon’s relationship deepened after she took him out for a meal on his birthday, knowing how difficult special occasions can be after a loss.

“We thought we’ll see where this goes and quite quickly we fell in love," Rosie said.

"We announced it to the world and were quite quickly thinking about combining our families and buying a house."

The couple, who live in West Malling, have four children between them - Monty, 12, Hector, 10, Holly, nine, and five-year-old Tabitha.

But tragically, nine months after Rosie found love again, she was once more facing the threat of losing her partner.

In March 2020, Jon contracted Covid and his health declined drastically.

He was rushed to hospital and was placed into a medically-induced coma. He didn’t regain consciousness until four weeks later.

"During this time I was called and told to hope for the best but to prepare for the worst," Rosie said.

“I faced the very real possibility of being essentially widowed, although we weren’t yet married, for a second time before I was 40.

“It made me question everything because you sort of think if you’ve been touched by horror once it won’t come back and it’s a bit of a jarring realisation that it can.

“It turns out that the 'lightning can’t strike twice' thing is completely untrue.”

But Jon says hearing messages Rosie had recorded on a dictaphone from their children, friends and family was the reason he fought back, survived his ordeal and, in the process, realised he needed to ask Rosie to marry him.

He proposed from his hospital bed over a video-call while the couple were still separated by Covid restrictions.

After emerging from his coma, the 44-year-old had to learn to walk again - and was spurred on by his imminent trip down the aisle.

They planned to get married in December 2020, hoping to end the difficult year on a high. However, their plans were almost thwarted when another lockdown was announced.

Rosie said: “We planned to just have a small ceremony at Tunbridge Wells register office and then have a bigger celebration later in the year.

“But then we were called by the registrar, who said 'If you come right now we can marry you, because we think we’re going back into lockdown tonight'.

“I had a dress but it wasn’t the most romantic, having to rush to get ready and hop in the car.

“We realised we had forgotten the wedding rings on the way so we improvised and in under half an hour we had become man and wife.

“It was incredible, it was a romantic and spontaneous celebration of love.”

Now, Rosie wants to share what she has learnt about love and loss in the five years since Ben's death.

To that end, she has started a podcast with friend and fellow widow Lucinda Boast, named Widowed AF.

The friends, who also met at a support group for young widows, hope to help others who have lost their partners, and also help people to better understand the experience so they can support those struggling with grief.

Rosie says she wants to break down expectations placed on widows.

“You don’t have to wear black for the rest of your life," she explained.

"You are allowed to keep pictures of your husband up in your house if you want to, but you don’t have to.

“You have to do what works for you. It doesn’t mean you loved them any less, it just means that's how you want to grieve.

“With the podcast, we want it to be what we needed and we will be speaking to people about how they recovered and how they rebuilt their lives.

“Many people will find the stories on Widowed AF shocking because they haven’t heard anything quite like them before.

"We’ve almost become a little desensitised because we talk about this a lot, but statistically, if you are romantically involved with someone you have a chance of losing them.”