Tom still talks to me and sends loving messages, says Wanted star’s widow Kelsey Parker a year on from his death
SINGER Tom Parker is a loving presence in the lives of his wife Kelsey and their two young children – a year after his tragic death from a brain tumour.
She reveals: “I speak to him a lot and I ask him questions and he will send signs back to me.
“One of my friends bought my children two Build-A-Bear teddies, one with a song from Tom and one with his favourite song in it.
“And at night, sometimes the bear with Tom’s song inside it will just start to play. It is like, ‘Oh my God’.
“Even when I trekked the Sahara for charity, I got to the top of this dune and there was a butterfly.
“I say to the children, ‘Daddy is with the butterflies’. A butterfly . . . in the Sahara desert.”
Despite chemotherapy and 30 radiotherapy sessions, Tom, of boy band the Wanted, died from the incurable stage 4 glioblastoma tumour on March 30 last year aged just 33, with Kelsey at his side.
Now she is raising their children, three-year-old Aurelia Rose and Bhodi Thomas, two, as a single parent and is doing everything she can to keep Tom’s memory alive.
The other day I started going through Tom’s Instagram stories… it was so hilarious watching them. I loved being back with him.
The prospect of today’s anniversary was understandably hard for her but she revealed she planned to spend the day celebrating Tom’s life with her family and closest friends.
She added: “The kids will go to nursery as usual and I am going to lunch with my family.
“Tom has about three benches, so we will go to our family’s private bench.
“Lots of friends want to come, so we will walk there together.
“It is a village, and without that village I would not have been able to get there without them, so I have to include them in every anniversary.”
Kelsey, 32, has attempted to keep life as normal as possible for the children.
For herself, she balances keeping alive the memory of her old life with her new one, which includes a relationship with builder Sean Boggans — a subject she has chosen to keep completely private.
It is clear that Tom — who Kelsey had been with for 13 years and married in 2018 — will always remain a priority in her life.
She said: “The other day I started going through his Instagram stories.
“When we went into lockdown in 2020, Tom went on a mad one.
“He has always loved to break every rule that was ever set so he went out loads during lockdown and did his ration adventures.
“Every day he would go out and try to find something new, whether it was beans or eggs.
“It was so hilarious watching them.
“I watched every single one of them.
“I just loved being back with him at that time.
“I haven’t really gone through anything else.
“His songs I find really hard to listen to.
“If I’m in the supermarket and they play I have to walk out.”
Kelsey added that she is also still working out what to do with Tom’s belongings at the home they shared in South East London.
She said: “I have a whole studio set up, with microphones and everything.
“I am not a music producer so it doesn’t benefit me but what do I do with it?
“What do I do with his computer? I don’t know what to do with it.
“Tom wasn’t materialistic so when he died I said to my younger brothers, ‘Take what you want of his clothes’.
“When they are walking around in his clothes I like to see them, they’ve not gone to waste.
“He would have wanted them to have it.”
Kelsey was speaking at the launch of MTV’s Faces, a new digital series hosted by former footballer and reality TV face Ashley Cain — who lost his daughter Azaylia to a rare form of cancer in April 2021 when she was just eight months old.
The series, which includes Kelsey in conversation with Ashley about her experience following Tom’s death, encourages people to talk more about death and grief.
Other episodes see Ashley speaking to Loose Women’s Brenda Edwards about the death of her son Jamal and Roman Kemp on the passing of his good pal Joe Lyons, who took his own life.
Kelsey says she feels like an advocate for this message, calling upon people to speak about loss and not to be afraid about being open with their children.
She said: “I think death should be normalised.
“I don’t know why we don’t want to talk about it.
“Maybe because we have lived it, it is normal to us.
“People ask me if I have been to counselling but I feel like I have counselled myself.
“I will ring my mum and say, ‘This has really upset me today’, or ‘This is how I am feeling’.
“Me and Tom used to speak a lot — we were together for 13 years.
“The time we spent together talking, even towards the end helps, it releases you.
“Talking gets me through the days, talking to other people, even talking to parents of sick children about what we have learned on our journey.
“My journey with Tom was 18 months, and everything I have learned in that 18 months.
“If I can help 50 people I will know Tom did not die in vain.”
The day he was going to die, I said to Aurelia ‘I am going to the hospice to see Dad because I have got to make sure the angels take him today’
Recalling the moment she told her children Tom had passed away, Kelsey said: “It is the hardest conversation we ever had to have.
“I knew Tom was going to die because his breathing had changed.
“The day he was going to die I said to her (Aurelia), ‘I am going to the hospice to see Dad because I have got to make sure the angels take him today’.
“We came back in the evening and in the morning I said, ‘Daddy isn’t here any more.
“He is in the sky with the angels and the butterflies’.
“They accepted it but now we get a lot of questions.
“Aurelia will ask, ‘Why has my best friend got a dad and I haven’t got a dad any more?’
“I say, ‘You do have a dad, he is not here’.”
The death of the Queen last September also prompted Aurelia to ask more questions.
Kelsey said: “When the Queen died Aurelia asked, ‘Is the Queen with my dad now?’
“I said, ‘I don’t know if your dad and the Queen are together, but he is up there probably giving her some advice right now’.”
In the months following his diagnosis in October 2020, Tom — who had ten UK Top Ten singles and three Top Ten albums with the Wanted — worked tirelessly to raise money and awareness around brain tumours.
As well as writing a book, Hope, he also helped to put on a charity fundraising night of music at London’s Royal Albert Hall as part of Channel 4’s Stand Up 2 Cancer.
Tom’s legacy will now be continued by Kelsey, who is determined to help make a difference.
She said: “I have got big plans for this year to keep fundraising and keep pushing for more awareness.
“I still have so many people messaging me, saying, ‘This person has a brain tumour’, and ‘This person has a brain tumour’. It is so difficult.
“When Tom was diagnosed, the treatment had not changed in 30 years. This has to change.”
She added: “For us as a family, when Tom was diagnosed, brain tumours get one per cent of funding.
“Every two hours someone is diagnosed with a brain tumour.
“Tom was doing all this work and now he has passed over the baton to me.”
- MTV FACES, hosted by Ashley Cain, premiered on the MTV UK YouTube channel today and weekly thereafter. Episode one features Kelsey Parker.