Collingwood veteran Jeremy Howe has shared his chilling account of the moment he found out his mum had died.

The AFL high-flyer was just 26 at the end of 2016 when, during a caravan trip through the centre of Australia, he got a call from his brother, which he screened at first, before realising it was something important.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Jeremy Howe details gut-wrenching account of mother’s passing.

Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today

“I was out of reception for four days, and then my brother tried to ring me at 5am or 5.15 — ‘I’m not answering this’, (I thought),” Howe told Unfiltered on Wednesday night.

“And then he rang my best mate, and he’s like, ‘Is Jeremy with you?’ And I heard him call me ‘Jeremy’, and I was like, what’s going on here?

“He just goes, two words — he said, ‘Mum’s dead’. That was it.

“I was like, ‘What?’, and he just repeated it. And I was like, ‘That can’t be right, you’re taking the piss, that’s not it, that’s not it’.”

Howe’s mother, Kim, was just 57 when she died of a heart attack in bed.

“I just kept shaking my head, and it was like, that can’t be right. I was like, I’m not buying it, I can’t wrap my head around it,” Howe went on.

“I ran out of the caravan and I just laid on the bitumen road, face-down, and I was just like, this can’t be real, he’s got to be joking, this can’t possibly happen to me right now — ever.

“So I didn’t take it in. And then obviously I spoke to him more, and he’s like, ‘It’s done, mum is not around anymore, she’s dead’.

“And he watched the whole scenario unfold; it was a heart attack in bed and my dad tried to revive her. My brother’s got to live with seeing that, and so does my dad — his soulmate, trying to do that (revive her).

“He saved people for a living, he was a fiery for 35 years. And then to have to watch that, it’s heartbreaking.”

Howe said he dropped everything and got home to Tasmania as quick as he could — but can’t remember anything from that moment until he walked in the front door to see his dad.

“I’m in Katherine, 400kms south of Darwin, and I don’t remember getting home,” he explained.

“So, from Katherine to Dodges Ferry took me 18 hours, and I don’t remember one bit.

“I blacked out for 18 hours. My mate drove me to the airport, I obviously booked a flight, got on it, met my wife in Melbourne, she jumped on the connecting flight with me to Hobart, then we got in a cab, 40-minute cab to home — and I don’t remember one bit, like, not one bit.

“I don’t remember shutting the car door, I don’t remember getting in the car, I don’t remember the airports — I don’t remember nothing.

“I was like, how does that even happen? How have I even got here?”

Only when he got back to his family home did the news really sink in, after which Howe’s legs physically buckled underneath him.

“It still didn’t sink in until I went to walk through the front door and saw my dad,” he said.

“And then my knees just went, I fell over, and, yeah, my knees just went.

“But then when I saw my dad, it was real. That was the hardest thing ever.

“It still gets me. I talk about my mum often, in a really positive manner, and I’m more than happy to do it.

“But trying to re-live that scenario and what they experienced — I can’t imagine what that’d be like.”