The devastated wife of a popular engineer who died following a short battle with bowel cancer said he was ‘loved by everyone who met him’.
Melissa Wright said her husband Steven was selfless to the end, believing he hung onto life for a couple of days just so he could celebrate her birthday.
Steven, 42, had been fit and well until November last year when he started to get a “sharp pain in his side”. He had been hanging a curtain rail and thought he must have just pulled a muscle.
However, nurse Melissa, said when the pain didn’t go away after a couple of days tests revealed he had bowel cancer which had spread and was very advanced. Despite chemotherapy treatment Steven’s condition worsened and he died while being cared for at Alice House Hospice earlier this month.
Melissa said Steven, who was a devoted dad to the couple’s two children, Lottie, 11, and eight-year-old Finley, had suffered from ulcerative colitis for many years, so used to undergo a colonoscopy every three years, but unfortunately the cancer developed between appointments.
The death of the engineer has come as a huge shock to his family, who all live in the Fens area of Hartlepool, because he was so fit and well, report Teesside Live. Melissa said Steven had no symptoms at all to indicate something was wrong prior to the pain in his side. She said: “He said he felt nothing, nothing at all. He was really fit and healthy.”
She said he used to eat healthily and the family used to love getting out into the countryside and Steven also played five-a-side football.
Heartbroken Melissa said: “He was just one of those people that everybody loved. He was the best of the best. No-one ever had a bad word to say about him. The kids absolutely adored him. Everyone who met him would never forget him.”
She said Steven’s parents, Nancy and Tony Wright, are understandably devastated. She said: “It’s a whole other level to lose a child.”
Melissa met Steven when she was just 19 and the pair were together for 18 wonderful years. She said: “He was at Alice House and he said ‘I can’t do it anymore’. On June 1 it was my birthday and we had breakfast in the garden.” Steven died a few days later.
Melissa said: “In true Steven fashion of putting everyone first I think he just hung on for my birthday. He was the love of my life, my soulmate.”
Anyone who knew Steven, a former Manor Academy pupil, is welcome to go along to his funeral service at Stranton Crematorium at 11.30am on Thursday, June 16 and afterwards to the Fens Pub.
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