A GRIEF-STRICKEN family is trying to come to terms with a second tragic death in two months.

Robert Craven died from a suspected heart attack, only two months after his younger son Justin died from a drug overdose.

The double tragedy has devastated a close-knit family who lived for each other, and has made them angry at the local drug culture.

Robert's widow Judith, 42, believes her 47-year-old husband never got over Justin's death and that caused his own death. "Really he died from a broken heart," she said at their home in Foxdale Close, Bacup.

"He never got over Justin's death. He just couldn't handle it. We both felt a lot of anger because Justin wasn't into drugs or anything like that.

"He was a lovely lad. Everyone liked him. Four hundred people attended his funeral."

A verdict of death by misadventure was recorded on 17-year-old Justin three weeks ago. A man is due to stand trial soon on a charge of supplying drugs to him.

"We still don't know all the details, but Rob was totally, totally gutted," said Mrs Craven.

She described how on the night before his own death Mr Craven kept going over his son's death. "He hadn't felt well, but then none of us had. He just sat there sobbing, saying 'I can't deal with all this anger'."

That evening he felt pains in his chest and back which his wife put down to side-effects of medication he had been taking to help him get over the tragedy. The pains were no better in the morning when Mrs Craven ran her husband a hot bath, went downstairs to make him a drink and went back upstairs to find him dead in the bath.

"We were told he had suffered a heart attack and had an underlying hardening of the arteries," said Mrs Craven "But he was just broken-hearted. And now I feel my heart's broken in two."

The double death is a tragic illustration of how the drug scene which is now a fact of life in East Lancashire can wrap its evil tentacles round the most law-abiding and decent of families.

The family live in an immaculate semi-detached house in Bacup, called Craven after themselves. The house is a testimony to Rob's building and artistic skills.

Over seven years he had established a successful Artexing business helped by his elder son Jason, 18.

A week before his death, Justin had joined a plastering course at Accrington and Rossendale College because the business lacked a skilled plasterer.

Justin was looking forward to joining the firm and had told his mother: "I want to be the best plasterer because Dad's a perfectionist."

They were a family who lived for each other, enjoying sitting out on summer evenings in the garden which Rob tended like a public park. "Rob lived for his home, his wife and his sons. He would have done anything to protect them," said his widow.

As a tribute to Justin, he made a special plot in the front garden for him. Justin's garden has a bird bath inscribed with a prayer and is filled with plants given to Mrs Craven from colleagues at Marks and Spencer in Rochdale where she works.

She went back to work in the store's catering section only a week ago. Now she and Jason are faced with picking up the pieces of their lives.

"I don't know what we will do," she said. "We will survive because we've got each other. But I will never understand why this has happened to us."

Friends, neighbours, the family doctor and their church minister have been outstandingly sympathetic and the local police have gone out of their way to help and try to ease the pain.

"But you think to yourself 'What can possibly happen next?'" she said.

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