Love, Interrupted: Navigating Grief, Finding Hope

By Simon Thomas

This updated and revised edition includes Simon's Reflections from a Distance, written four years after the original edition was published; he contemplates hope, recovery and happiness.

'In this incredibly moving must-read, Simon shares his journey through immense grief and pain, and shows us how hope can spring from the darkest of times' – Fearne Cotton

In November 2017, Simon Thomas's life was thrown into turmoil. His wife, Gemma, died suddenly from acute myleloid leukaemia. Left to care for their young son, Ethan, on his own, he resigned from Sky Sports, and put all his efforts into helping them both through the most difficult year of their lives. In 2019 he published the first edition of this book, in which – with searing honesty – he recounted that first year of loss and grief that he felt not only for himself, but also for his son Ethan.

But grief evolves; its rawness becomes less brutal and time offers space to reflect, to consider what has passed and to recognize that our experience with grief itself changes. In 2020 Simon launched a new podcast, Life, Interrupted, in which he interviews both celebrities and those not well-known, whose lives have been radically changed by a traumatic event. The podcast was the inspiration to revisit this book; and with the benefit of time, to reflect on what he has learned since Gemma's death.

This is not an A-Z on how to cope with grief: it is a father and son's journey down grief's bumpy road as they begin to find a reason to live again. Love, Interrupted shows that however much the darkness closes in, however bereft of hope life can sometimes feel, there is always light, love and life to be found.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trigger Publishing
• Release date: Oct 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781837962754

Simon Thomas

Simon Thomas has been a highly successful TV Broadcaster for nearly 20 years – starting as a Blue Peter presenter in 1999, followed by twelve years as an anchor for Sky Sports; eventually fronting their flagship Premier League football coverage. He is a lifelong Norwich City fan and now the proud President of the charity Bloodwise UK, a cause extremely close to his heart.

Book preview

PART ONE

From the End to the Beginning

There’s a real sense of unreality ... One part of your brain is going, ‘This is not happening to me and I am going to wake up in a minute and it will be fine’, and the other part of your brain is going, ‘Yeah, you are in serious trouble here’.

Tara Howell, Life, Interrupted

At the age of only 40, my beloved wife, Gemma, died just three days after being diagnosed with myeloid leukaemia, hurling my life, and that of our eight-year-old son, Ethan, into a maelstrom of grief. Those three days, and the events leading up to them, are etched indelibly on my memory.

1

The Longest Day of My Life

‘There is nothing seriously wrong.’

At a quarter to six on a bright, cold November evening, after what had felt like the longest day of my life, my world fell apart.

After hours of listening to a horrible, relentless rattle in her throat, as she struggled for breath, the sound suddenly stopped. With two gentle breaths that you could barely hear, she fell silent. Her face looked almost angelic. In that one moment, Gemma – the mother, the daughter, the sister and friend, the mother of my boy, and the woman I had loved for 16 years – was gone.

In that moment of peace, when the lights finally dimmed and faded, our future changed forever. I was gripped by a sick feeling in my stomach, like nothing I had ever felt before.

How on earth had this happened so fast? How had life been turned upside down in the space of just three days? Even now, I still struggle to comprehend how something can strike you down so quickly.

Sadly, inevitably, nearly all of us will be touched by cancer at some stage in our lives, whether directly or indirectly. We all know just how devastating the disease is for countless people. But I’d always thought that cancer at least afforded you some time … Time to try to get your head around it, to talk about what it is going to mean for you as a family, to try to eke out whatever time in life is left; time to steel yourself to say the final goodbye.

We never had that chance. She was gone in a moment.

Just three weeks before, everything had felt so normal. There was still some late autumn warmth in the sun; our beloved boy, Ethan, was enjoying the first term of a new school year; and family life felt as happy and as good as it ever had been.

It was a Monday morning at the end of October. I was at home enjoying my morning coffee and reading the sports pages and Gemma was on the school run. But when she arrived back home, she didn’t look in a good way at all. She hobbled through the front door, wincing in pain with every step she took. I asked her what on earth was wrong. It turned out that while walking Ethan from the car to the school gate, she had tripped up the kerb and landed badly on her foot. I did question how on earth she had managed to trip up a kerb, but unsurprisingly, this question didn’t go down too well!

As she took off her shoe to reveal her foot, I could see that it was already quite swollen and a nasty bruise was developing. Up until that point, my experience of foot injuries was based on little more than the outpouring of national concern when David Beckham injured his metatarsal ahead of the 2002 World Cup. But I didn’t need to be a medical genius to tell that this was more than just a bit of bruising. An hour or so later we were in the A&E department in Henley, and later that morning it was confirmed that Gemma had broken a bone in her foot. At the time, it felt like a huge blow. She knew she wouldn’t be able to drive for the next six weeks and she was going to have to wear a great big boot that looked like part of Darth Vader’s outfit. As her tears of frustration flowed, she said, ‘Why does this kind of stuff always happen to me?’

Ever since Ethan had been born in 2009, Gemma had struggled with insomnia. She had long periods where she would regularly endure nights when she didn’t sleep at all. I lost count of the mornings where I would ask how she slept, and through tired eyes and with a resigned tone in her voice, she would reply, ‘I haven’t.’ I never understood how she managed to function. She had every right to feel sorry for herself, she had every right to say ‘You, do the school run so I can get some rest,’ but every single time, she dragged herself out of bed and got on with the job of being Ethan’s mum.

A month before, while I’d been away working, she had sent me this text message, which really encapsulates the impact that her lack of sleep had on her emotionally:

Darl I’m so sorry – I’m trying hard not to let this sleep issue impact you and Ethan too much, but it’s difficult as I’m feeling rotten most of the time at the moment, either due to my severe lack of sleep or the amount of medication I’m taking – or both probably. I really hate this situation and I’m doing my best – I’m sure it’s temporary and I’ll be back on track soon. I know it’s not great for you either – I’m sorry for that. I love you both so very, very, much. Xxxx

The morning she broke her foot came in the midst of a really bad period of insomnia. She had also been having headaches that had gone from a few a week, to an almost daily occurrence. To me, a broken foot didn’t seem much more than an irritating inconvenience; to her, it felt like the final straw. She had had enough.

With Gemma out of action, I got used to my new life of doing the school run. I had always enjoyed doing it when Gemma couldn’t, but I wasn’t used to experiencing the incessant chatter of the school gate every day. (Unless you’re a seasoned school runner, it can feel like a bizarre world that takes you outside of your comfort zone as you struggle to fit in.)

Meanwhile, Gemma was trying to get used to life with her Darth Vader boot. Like so many other times over the course of our marriage, she adapted brilliantly and without ever complaining. But I could see that the headaches and the feeling of tiredness were growing steadily worse. Every time she complained of another headache, I would urge her to go to the doctor. All too often, my concerned advice was met with Gemma’s trademark roll of the eyes. She might not have been worried, but I was beginning to worry very much …

A few years earlier, I had suffered quite badly with depression, and slowly, but surely, I had begun to feel it creeping back into our lives. Only this time, it came with an unwanted bedfellow: anxiety. I was worried about Gemma, but I didn’t know to what extent my worries were being affected by the depression.

The depressive feelings had been slowly wearing me down, and the doctor had signed me off work, and prescribed antidepressants. I was due to go back for a follow-up appointment a couple of weeks after Gemma’s disagreement with the kerb. The night before the appointment, she sent a message to her close friend, Esther, that gives a glimpse into how she was really feeling:

I’m in bed. Had some tea and then started feeling horrendous – feel like I’m totally done in at the moment ... permanent banging headache, mouth ulcers, exhausted and about two hours sleep last night … Know it will get better but it feels tough right now.

I had little idea of how bad she actually was, but I asked if we could have a joint appointment. At the very least, I wanted to find out if there really was anything to worry about.

Mid-morning, we sat down with a doctor we had always liked and got on with … although we’d half joked that if you needed a prescription for anything quickly – he’d be your man.

Gemma told him she’d been having reoccurring headaches for the past few weeks and how she’d been feeling so very tired most of the time. The doctor knew about Gemma’s long-term struggles with insomnia and, understandably, felt the tiredness was linked to it. But then he asked about her headaches; specifically, how stressed she was feeling about me.

I knew Gemma must have been worried; why wouldn’t she be? To see your other half struggling with mental illness is horrible, and deeply unsettling. You want to do anything you can to help make it better, but you feel helpless.

Between the lack of sleep and the stress of seeing me hit so hard by depression, it wasn’t surprising Gemma’s headaches were so bad. We left with a prescription of Codeine for her, and more depression pills for me. For a time, the Codeine did its job of easing the pain; but Gemma’s tiredness was becoming markedly worse.

Some of it, I could see for myself. Some of it, I found out later. Her friend Liz told me just how hard Gemma had found a shopping trip to Reading later that week. When it had come to hobbling back to the car park in her big old boot, Gemma told Liz she didn’t have the energy to get there; she said she felt physically weak and had to sit down. Eventually, Gemma being Gemma, she got up, carried on, and made it back to the car. Had I known about it at the time, it would have set off an alarm bell in my head.

But the next morning, the alarm bells were definitely ringing. As I took up her cup of tea on Thursday morning, I noticed the big bruise on her thigh. When I asked her where the bruise had come from, she replied in a very matter-of-fact way, that it was from when she had fallen. I thought it was weird that it was still there, three weeks after the accident, but Gemma seemed unconcerned and that was the end of the conversation. We never talked about it again.

Knowing what I know now about blood cancers, a bruise like that can be a tell-tale sign that something serious is at work. But back then, we thought nothing more of it.

By the Friday morning it was becoming ever clearer that this wasn’t just headaches mixed in with another dose of insomnia, Gemma was getting ill – really ill.

When I got back from the morning school run, she was still in bed. So many times over the years, she had managed to function, even when she’d felt as rough as sandpaper. This time was different. She told me she had no energy to do anything, and needed to spend the morning in bed. But even as I told her to rest, she immediately started worrying about the weekend. Our friends, Michael and Angellica and their family were coming to stay; it had been in the diary for weeks. Gemma had booked a lovely table in an outside igloo, at a restaurant in the nearby village of Sonning, and she didn’t want to let them down.

I had known Angellica and Michael since our CBBC days. I had lost touch with so many of the presenters I worked with during those heady days at Television Centre, but Angellica and Michael had stayed close friends with us both. The weekend they were due to come was in the weeks following Angellica winning the BBC’s Celebrity MasterChef. Gemma had always loved cooking and had religiously followed Angellica’s amazing journey to the final. During and after every episode she would text Angellica with her excited commentary. And when the final episode was broadcast that saw her crowned champion, Gemma sent her this text:

Never in doubt. Brilliant Angellica – so proud! Well done!!!!! Xxxx

Part of Gemma’s excitement about seeing Angellica was to talk about a book idea they’d shared. It would be Angellica’s book but Gemma was going to help her write it, and was already bubbling away with lots of ideas. They’d been swapping texts for most of the week, and on that Friday, Gemma texted her to say how rubbish she was feeling:

Hi Hun … I’m so sorry and fed up about this but I’ve been in bed since yesterday with a pounding horrible headache that I just can’t shift – actually had headache for about ten days and it’s got a lot worse and I’ve totally lost my appetite too – hardly eaten for 3 days. Waiting to speak to doctor – been taking Codeine which I think is making it worse. Just wanted to warn you but am so hoping I feel better tmrw – even if we just get a takeaway tmrw eve. Can I let you know in the morning? So sorry. Xxx

Gemma got a last-minute doctor’s appointment later that day. I rushed back from dropping Ethan at a party to join her, with a sick feeling growing in my stomach. Much as my mind was trying to tell me it was nothing serious, the steady but now increasing deterioration in Gemma’s health was starting to inject the fear into my mind that this could be something more sinister.

For the second time in three days, we were back in the surgery, except this time we were seeing a different doctor. Once again, we talked about the headache she couldn’t shift. We talked about how her health had deteriorated since Wednesday – the increased fatigue, the fact she was struggling to get out of bed (which was so unusual for Gemma) and her loss of appetite. If the doctor was concerned, it never showed. He spent some time looking into her eyes with his ophthalmoscope, asking various questions about whether she had been suffering any blurred vision – she hadn’t. And a few minutes later he uttered the words that will stay with me forever.

‘Having looked at your general wellbeing and your vital signs, I’m satisfied there is nothing seriously wrong with you. If things get worse over the weekend, come back on Monday.’

And that was it; we got up and left the surgery. Gemma was the worst I’d ever seen her in the 16 years we’d been together, yet the doctor seemed unconcerned.

Every time I thought back to that appointment in the weeks to come, I was furious. I hated myself for not being more assertive with him. Why did I just accept what he’d said, shrug my shoulders, and leave? Why hadn’t I insisted that she should, at the very least, have a blood test? Why hadn’t he told us to drive to A&E, just to get it checked out? Just to be sure!

Why hadn’t I screamed at him to do more?!

They say hindsight is a wonderful thing. For me, it’s been a curse. Looking back at those weeks now, through the eyes of someone who has become all too aware of the plethora of symptoms a blood cancer can present, I can see exactly why everything that was happening to Gemma was happening.

Her white blood cell count was going through the roof, her blood was thickening with every hour, and her heart was struggling to push the thick blood through her body. No wonder she was beyond exhausted. Poor, poor Gems.

As soon as we got home, Gemma returned to bed. Ethan ran through the front door a little later, asking ‘How’s Mummy?’ I told him he could tiptoe upstairs to see her, and a few minutes later I walked into our bedroom to see him cuddled up to Gemma in our bed. It was a sight I had seen so many times before, but this time, for some reason, it felt so different. The eyes of an eight-year-old see things so differently to the eyes of an adult. Ethan knew his mum wasn’t well, but he didn’t have any of the growing worries that were crowding my mind. He looked up at her pale, exhausted face and said, ‘I love you, Mummy, you’ll be better soon.’ With that, he was off, and minutes later I could hear him pouring yet another huge box of Lego all over his bedroom floor.

At about half ten that Friday night Gemma texted Angellica again:

I really don’t want to cancel!! Saw the doctor earlier – still feeling rough but don’t want to let the kids down …. Let’s go ahead. Hopefully will feel bit better tmrw. X

We never did get to see Angellica and Michael that weekend. And Gemma didn’t feel any better the next day. The growing fatigue, the bruising, the loss of appetite and those horrible bloody headaches would never relent. Unbeknown to her, and all of us, Gemma was already in the final week of her life.

2

The Quiet Whisper of Fear

‘You need to get better.’

As Saturday passed into Sunday, there was no sign of an improvement. If anything, Gemma was getting steadily worse, hour by hour. In all the years I’d known her, I had never seen her so incapacitated: bed-bound, in constant pain, and utterly exhausted. It was almost too much for her to get out of bed and walk the three steps to our ensuite bathroom. She wasn’t eating much either, just the occasional bite of toast and a few sips of tea.

Whenever I re-live that week in my mind, the sadness is just as acute. The guilt is always there, nagging away at me. And I’m still asking myself those same questions:

Why the hell didn’t you do something?

Why didn’t you pick her up, carry her to the car and take her straight to A&E?

Why …?

In part, I think I wasn’t seeing things with the same clarity because of the anxiety and the depression, but I also think it had something to do with Gemma … A lot of us men (I’m trying to pretend I’m not one of them) are not exactly impressive when it comes to being ill. Even a common cold can turn a man into a gibbering wreck of self-pity while overdosing on Lemsip and Nurofen under the duvet.

But for so many women, like Gemma, their care for others, and in particular their family, almost overrides their need to care for themselves. In all the time we had been married, when Gemma had been ill, she always managed to carry on. She was always there for us, even when she felt like death warmed up. This illness was markedly different. But she continued to tell me that I didn’t need to worry.

I wonder now if there’s another truth to this – whenever we feel ill in a way that is different to anything we’ve felt before, it comes with a quiet whisper of fear. It’s the fear that stops us trying to discover what’s wrong, or even lets us admit to feeling scared. In our minds, we try and rationalize it. We tell ourselves it’s probably nothing serious. Rather than confront the fear of what might be wrong, we bury our heads in the sand and hope that it will soon pass. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss. Maybe there was a sense of that in Gemma’s reluctance to seek help, and to hold back from screaming at the doctor that she wasn’t ‘just tired’ – she felt hideous.

Gemma was continually worrying about Ethan, and what we could do to keep the weekend as normal as possible for him. She told me that Ethan really wanted to watch Paddington 2 again, so she had booked two tickets, so I could take him to a showing that afternoon in Reading. Even though she was feeling, in her words, ‘horrendous’, and finding the briefest of physical movements exhausting, that didn’t stop her thinking of her darling boy. I didn’t want to leave her, but she insisted.

So for the second time in eight days we went to see the brilliant Paddington 2, except this time it was just me and my boy – a foretaste of things to come.

As Ethan munched merrily on his popcorn, and the endless trailers played, my mind drifted back to the weekend before, when the three of us had sat in almost the same row of seats. Back then, when the film reached its heart-warming finale and Paddington rushed up to his precious Aunt Lucy, embraced her, and wished her a happy birthday, Ethan began to cry. But they weren’t tears of sadness, they were tears of joy. An eight-year-old boy had been profoundly moved by the reunion of two family members whose bond of love had remained unbroken despite many miles and months apart. I remember so clearly turning to Gemma as Ethan’s tears flowed and seeing the tears welling up in her eyes too. As we lay in bed that night, she told me she’d been crying tears of pride and joy for her boy, at seeing him being able to express his emotions in front of us, and feel totally at ease in doing so. In so many ways, that bond between Paddington and Aunt Lucy represented so much of the bond between Gemma and Ethan. Precious, strong, and unconditional.

As we enjoyed the film again, Gemma was still trying to keep her friends up to speed on how she was doing:

Feeling worse … haven’t got out of bed today apart from to have a shower – then nearly threw up … :(Not eaten since Thursday, back to doc tmrw hopefully x

I wonder how I’d have felt if I’d known – as we lay there that Sunday night – that it was the last time Gemma would ever sleep in our bed? Never again would I get to enjoy the normal, unappreciated act of falling asleep with my wife – my rock – lying beside me. Before I turned off the light, we agreed that, first thing in the morning, we would ring the surgery to get another appointment. As I lay there, my mind was a whirlpool of fears as I began to worry ever more that this might – just might – be something more than stress; something altogether more serious.

By the time I returned from the now-routine school run that Monday morning, Gemma had managed to get an appointment at the surgery for 9.30am – exactly the same time as I had an appointment with the counsellor I’d been seeing for my depression and anxiety. As I arrived home, Gemma had somehow mustered the strength to get dressed and haul herself downstairs. She said she wanted me to go to my counsellor, but she felt too ill to wait in the surgery until I’d finished, so she was trying to find someone to pick her up and take her home. I could barely believe what I was hearing – why on earth would I go to my counsellor when my wife was so very ill? Why did it even merit a discussion?

I understood her deep desire to see me get better, to see me back at work; for normality to reign again; but right then, at that moment, she was my only priority. ‘I need to come with you, Darl,’ I kept saying. But no matter how much I protested she was having none of it. ‘Darl, you must go,’ she told me tenderly. ‘You need to get better.’ Despite feeling sicker than she had ever felt before, she was still putting me before herself. It didn’t matter what I said. Her mind was made up. With a heavy heart, I did what she asked.

To this day – and probably for the rest of my life – I will always regret that moment.

I would do anything now to be able to go back and carry her into that doctor’s room. My illness could have waited; hers could not. I should have been there with her, impressing on our doctor just how bad she’d been over the weekend. But I wasn’t.

An hour later, I returned home to find her back in bed. Nothing had changed. I asked her what the doctor had said. It had been five days since he’d seen her; surely he would have seen the deterioration. Surely, he would have seen the desperation to get better in her eyes? Incredibly, he hadn’t.

In the hour or so after that final appointment, Gemma’s friend, Catherine, texted her to confirm arrangements for a day out they’d planned.

Hi babes how are you feeling today? We’re ‘booked in’ for our date night at IKEA tomorrow but I’m guessing you’re not up for it yet … shall I cancel and we’ll try and get a date in next month? Xx

Gemma’s reply gives a chilling insight into something of what happened in the surgery that morning:

Oh sorry – had completely forgotten about that, can we postpone? Been in bed since Thursday – still no appetite :-(Seen doctor again – he still thinks its stress-related … I’m not so sure. Xx

It pains me to read that text again, never knowing exactly what was said between Gemma and our doctor that Monday morning. And, in the early weeks after she went, my anger and resentment towards him became, at times, unbearable.

When I re-read that text to Catherine now, some of that anger bubbles back to the surface. For weeks, I wrestled with this one simple question – if Gemma was the most poorly I had ever seen her, how the hell did he not see it?

We didn’t know, then, that her blood had become thick with the explosion of white blood cells caused by acute myeloid leukaemia. The damage to the blood vessels in her brain that would kill her just days later was already underway. By that Monday, it was probably already too late.

3

Time to Fight

‘Your blood is deranged.’

By the Monday afternoon, Gemma’s condition had taken a more sinister turn – she started being sick for the first time. Any lingering hope that this was just some stress-related illness disappeared. Gemma’s mum, Wendy, expressed our growing pain and confusion:

My mind was working overtime … The thought began to grow … Was there something really terribly wrong? A brain tumour … something else? I couldn’t get her out of my thoughts. I prayed: was there anything I could do; anything I had to do? I hated interfering, I didn’t want to be the interfering mother-in-law. But the answer to that prayer came … I had to contact Gemma and Simon’s close friends, Dave and Debs. I needed to speak to someone with medical qualifications, and I knew Dave’s sister, Meg, was an eye surgeon, and he said she’d be happy to contact Gems. I hated going behind Simon’s back, but just felt I had to do something. I felt so helpless.

When I found out, I was angry. It felt like she didn’t trust me, she didn’t think her son-in-law was capable of understanding just how ill her daughter was. But as I’ve reflected on this, I’ve realized Wendy was right. And I’m glad she went behind my back. Time was no longer on our side.

Meg rang later that evening. Gently, but firmly, she told me that we needed to get help, then insisted that she speak to Gemma. In the silence after Gemma hung up, I asked what Meg had said. With a resigned tone to her voice, she said Meg wanted her to go to A&E – straightaway.

Gemma didn’t want to go. But seeing her so ill, so defeated, brought me to my senses. I told her we didn’t have a choice – we had to go.

After calls to Wendy, and to Dave and Debs, we decided I should stay home to keep things as ‘normal’ as possible for Ethan, while Debs took Gemma to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading. Ethan was fast asleep by this time, blissfully unaware of what was unfolding, but neither of us wanted him waking up to discover that we were both gone. Reluctantly, Gemma walked out of our bedroom, down the stairs, and out of the front door to Debs’ car.

Little did any of us know that she had left our house for the last time. That she would never again kiss her precious boy good night again in our home. Or lie next to me in our bed. When she left, it changed our home forever.

As Gemma sat in A&E, I tried to wait patiently at home, but the minutes felt like hours. I couldn’t settle; I couldn’t rest – all I could do was wait, and wonder what was happening.

Debs was with her:

Even though Gemma was clearly not well, she still wasn’t sure she should be at A&E. Especially that night, as there had just been a report on the BBC News about how busy the Royal Berkshire’s A&E department was, and how overstretched the doctors were. As we watched more and more people coming in, she said, ‘Gosh, some of these people are really sick,’ implying she wasn’t – even though she was having hot flushes and feeling nauseous.

Gemma was very appreciative of me taking her and sorry that it was so late (we got there around 10pm and waited more than an hour to be seen). In spite of the pain she was in, she still kept trying to make me laugh though – at one point she was looking at her leg poking out from her pyjama bottoms and commented on her ‘winter coat’ (non-waxed legs). She also pointed out an ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ small blood blister on her leg – innocuous at the time, but possibly a sign of what was happening in her body that she was completely unaware of.

For the second time in 12 hours, I felt guilty that I wasn’t with Gemma. I should have been by her side. But when I thought about our precious boy asleep, upstairs, I knew that I needed to be at home for him. As the clock ticked past midnight, Gemma texted:

Darl, I think I’m going to be here for a while – I need you to be with me. Debs is going to head back in a bit and has offered to sleep at ours. I love you. Xx

At about 12.45am that Tuesday morning, Debs returned home, and we swapped places. She told me that Gemma had finally been seen, and at long last, her blood was being tested, but there was no telling how long it would be before the results came back. As I arrived at the hospital, the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach intensified. I had no idea what was about to come, but I couldn’t escape the uneasy feeling: this wasn’t going to be a night that would end