A mum has described the heartbreaking moment her daughter told her she had just six weeks to live.
Rosemary Wright, 79, was left without the two most important people in her life after she lost Deb, 52, and her husband of 60 years within just months of each other.
Her daughter had complained of a persistent earache, and when a course of antibiotics didn't work, a trip to A&E revealed a devastating diagnosis of oesophageal cancer.
The news came as a terrible shock to the family, said Mrs Wright, who revealed her daughter had been in perfectly good health prior to the diagnosis.
Deb had completed a marathon and even once ran with the Olympic Torch, she said.
Mrs Wright said: “From her initial diagnosis, we had six weeks with Deb.
"It was such a shock as she was so fit and healthy," she told Derbyshire Live.
"Every little goal she set herself was taken away. After she died, I was really angry, because she had had so much planned."
Tragically Mrs Wright's husband of 57 years, Ken, never recovered from the loss and died in January last year.
His pre-existing heart condition was made worse following Deb's passing, and by the latter stages he had ended up "not wanting to live", which she said was hard to take.
Reflecting on how she coped without the two of them, she said: "We’d been together for 60 years and suddenly you’re only half a person, you’re no longer whole anymore. It was difficult to come to terms with it all because Deb would have given anything to stay with us, whereas the old man had had enough.
“Ken didn’t want a funeral as such, he just wanted to go with nobody there, with no fuss. We knew the day he was going to be cremated but not the time. That was hard as a family, as we couldn’t really say goodbye. But it’s what he wanted.”
Soon afterwards, Rosemary visited a Treetops Hospice drop-in cafe in Derby city centre, where she was told about the counselling support available to her.
While she "wasn’t sure what to expect" at first, she found her counsellor Ian was a "very caring and kind person" who allowed her to open up without feeling pressured.
She made an effort to come to the counselling session every week no matter how bad she was feeling, and found the sessions let her speak about her grief without feeling like she was upsetting other members of the family.
“Ian helped me realise I hadn’t really had time to grieve myself, that it was put on hold. Counselling put me on a more even keel. It really helped.”, she said.
Rosemary now attends the "Tears to Laughter" group, a weekly peer support group in the area for bereaved adults, and has even taken up Tai Chi classes at the hospice.
While she said living with the immense sense of loss is "still hard and it’s never going to go away", Rosemary also felt Deb wouldn't want her to "sit and mope all the time", and now finds it comforting to remember advice given to her by Ian during her sessions.
Treetops Hospice is celebrating 40 years this year of caring for people and their families in the local community. For further information about Treetops services, visit www.treetops.org.uk or call 0115 949 1264.
