Tom Parker’s wife Kelsey marks two years since The Wanted star’s death with heartbreaking tribute
TOM Parker’s grieving widow Kelsey has marked two years since The Wanted star’s death with a heartbreaking tribute.
The singer passed away in March 2022 aged 33 after an 18-month battle with brain cancer.
Taking to Instagram Kelsey, 33, shared a sweet montage of videos of Tom with their kids Aurelia, four, and Bodhi, three.
Writing next to the video, she said: “Today is the first day of March and it brings with it the painful reminder that this is the month lost Tom’.
I think about him every single day, and I think March will always be a difficult month.
Kelsey Parker
“I still can’t quite believe it is almost two years since he passed. I know he is watching over me and the kids every day, but his physical absence from our lives is so huge.”
She continued: “I miss his banter and his laugh so much. I’d do anything to have one more day with him.
“I think about him every single day, and I think March will always be a difficult month.
“March is also Brain Tumour Awareness month and tonight at 7.30pm I will be lighting a candle in Tom’s memory and also for all the other families affected by this devastating disease.
“Please join me and @braintumourrsch in raising awareness and funding so brain tumours can stop taking away our husbands, wives, parents, siblings, grandparents and our children.”
Before adding: “We will beat this. Sending love and light to anyone experiencing grief Kels xx’.
Shortly after Tom’s death in 2022, Kelsey spoke exclusively to The Sun on Sunday and said, “He wasn’t in any pain”, when he died.
Wiping back the tears, she said: “It was still beautiful until the very end. It was just us and there was so much love in that room.”
The mum-of-two talked about Tom’s final hours in a hospice.
And she told how she was convinced he returned to be with her moments after she gave him a final kiss.
Kelsey also told of the heartbreaking moment she told their two-year-old daughter Aurelia that she was going to make sure the angels safely collected her daddy.
She said she fell in love “at first sight” with Tom as a teenager, long before he and The Wanted bandmates Max George, Jay McGuiness, Siva Kaneswaran, and Nathan Sykes became famous with a string of hit songs.
But she said some of the most precious moments they spent together came in the days before his death.
Tom was in St Christopher’s Hospice, near their South London home, following treatment for grade four glioblastoma.
With tears streaming down her face Kelsey said: “I got into bed with him. We were in bed together for two hours, I just wanted that time with him.
“I didn’t want anyone coming in. We needed that time together to talk.
“It was romantic even then. Yes, we were in a hospice but that was Tom as a person, it never mattered where we were.
“He was always so romantic, loving and caring, and absolutely worshipped the ground I walked on.
“That night I could see within him that he was still trying to figure a way out of this. He’d been in the hospice for just over a week.
“I said, ‘You know Tom, I will be OK, the kids will be OK. I will make sure that everything you want them to know, the things that you’ve taught me over the years, I promise to teach them it all’.
“He said, ‘I know you’re going to be OK’. He then took off his wedding ring and put it on my finger.
‘EXCHANGE OF LOVE’
“I think he knew then it was the end but he still had the Tom fight in him. He didn’t want to go.
“You always want that miracle and I was wishing for that miracle. Of course you want that.”
Tom had done everything he could to fight his cancer — and help others by raising money and awareness — since his diagnosis in October 2020 after having unexplained seizures.
He had 30 rounds of chemotherapy and 30 radiotherapy sessions and later spent three weeks in Spain for specialist treatment.
He returned to the UK at the beginning of March so he could join his bandmates on stage for The Wanted’s reunion UK tour.
The last picture of Kelsey and Tom together shows her planting a tender kiss on his head backstage at London’s 02 following The Wanted’s show there on March 15.
Kelsey said: “When he passed away I closed his eyes and I gave him a kiss and said I love you. I told him he was my everything.”
She said goodbye to her husband for the last time and went outside, telling us: “I was sitting there on this bench, crying, when I looked up and this feather fell down from the sky.
“I said to Tom before he passed away, ‘Will you give me signs every day’, and he said, ‘Yes’. I knew straight away it was him.
“I kept that feather, I still have it in a little glass pot on my dressing table.”
The much-loved star’s funeral was held in April 2022, and saw his The Wanted bandmates carry is coffin into the church.
- FOR information and support relating to brain tumours go to www.thebraintumourcharity.org