Jonnie Irwin’s wife Jess has revealed their son asked a ‘heartbreaking’ question after his dad’s death, admitting there was also one particular aspect of his passing that made her ‘really, really, really sad’.
Jonnie, who was known for presenting A Place in the Sun and Escape to the Country, died in February at the age of 50 after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
Jess said she would ‘always love’ her husband after ‘8 bonkers years of love and adventure’ with their three sons.
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“I will continue to make you proud but only with your love still finding me and guiding me for the rest of my life, me and the boys still need you,” she wrote in a poignant Instagram tribute at the time.
“Jonnie you really were the most handsome man I ever knew and I am so sorry for this cruel end. It really wasn’t fair and you didn’t deserve any of this.
“You gave so much time to others and touched everyone you met, I have never experienced anything like the effect you had on people. I love you so much and forever proud of you.”
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Jess has now spoken out about how the past few months have been for the family, telling Hello! that they’ve found many ways to keep Jonnie’s memory alive.
In the wake of his diagnosis, the parents had chosen not to tell Rex, five, and three-year-old twins Rafa and Cormac.
Jess now chooses to be careful about how she speaks about Jonnie, often taking the boys’ lead.
"Jonnie is present in so many of our chats,” she said. “Rex will say 'would Daddy like to watch this?' or 'was this Daddy's favourite chocolate?' He wants to include him, whereas with the twins, it's more 'I want Daddy to come back,' and I say 'yes, I do, too.'"
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Jess revealed that Cormac recently asked her a question that she found particularly difficult.
"The other day Cormac asked: 'Can the spaceman not find him?'” she said. "That broke my heart.”
The mum-of-three continued: “Rex had these wrap-around sunglasses on when we went away recently and he pointed to the screws and said: 'Mummy, look – if you press this button, you can see up in the sky. And if you press this button, you can speak to Daddy.'
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"I said: 'Oh wow, that's amazing. Can I borrow them?'” to which Rex replied: “Of course.”
Jess said things had all been ‘quite positive’, but admitted that the weeks he died had been understandably hard.
“Two weeks before, he'd been playfully giving me grief for something, so I was still trying to get him to make plans and telling him off when I felt he was being negative,” she said. “Now I wonder, did he know?
"That's what makes me really, really, really sad, when I think what must have been going through his mind."
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Jess said Jonnie made her laugh like no one else.
"We had so much fun, Jonnie and me,” she added. “We were never boring. We weren't best friends, we were lovers; there was passion."
Topics: Jonnie Irwin, Cancer, Parenting, Celebrity
Jess Hardiman