‘I came close to ending it all but my precious boy saved me’: SIMON THOMAS turned to the bottle after losing his wife to cancer, but he pulled through thanks to his magical bond with their son
- Former Sky Sports presenter Simon Thomas lost wife Gemma to cancer in 2017
- He was teetotal but then the wheels came off and he returned to alcohol
- But now Simon and his son Ethan are helping each other through their loss
The weeks following my wife Gemma’s tragically swift death from leukaemia in November 2017 were a maelstrom of shock and grief.
I was lucky in some ways: I had staunch family and friends to support me, and the flow of people through the house barely let up for the first four months.
Once I looked up and there was my old Blue Peter mate Matt Baker in my hallway. The fact that he’d come to give me a massive hug, not knowing what state he’d find me in, meant everything.
Simon left notes in Ethan’s packed lunches every day to make him know that his daddy was always thinking about him
But I was a mess, too, and it must have been hard for my friends to see. My lowest point came that first New Year, when I did what I’d promised Gemma I’d never do again, and hit the bottle.
I have always had a love-hate relationship with alcohol. When I was younger, all too often I found my confidence in a glass of something, especially when I got it into my head that people would have certain expectations of me in a social setting.
No matter how many years I’d spent in front of the camera, whether on Blue Peter at the BBC or presenting premier league football for Sky, I couldn’t stop worrying. What if people discover who I really am? What if they realise that I’m just a fraud who’s half decent talking to a camera?
The rest is a familiar story. The dependence creeps up on you without you realising it, and then starts to become a source of tension in your marriage and your life.
Simon and Ethan are pictured having fun together before their shocking loss which led the TV presenter to turn back to alcohol
Four months before Gemma fell ill, I decided enough was enough, and went teetotal. There was no big moment of crisis or enlightenment; I’d just got tired of it. In front of her, and in front of my family and friends, I publicly pledged that I wouldn’t drink again.
But then came New Year, and the wheels fell off. I still feel a huge sense of selfishness and guilt as I write this, but that night I gave myself permission to drink again.
The previous month had taken its toll, of course it had. I wanted — needed — to escape the pain, and at first that’s exactly what the alcohol did. But then it took my mind to a much darker place.
My eight-year-old son Ethan and I were staying at my sister’s house, and as the others slept, I got out of bed, walked down the stairs and out into the garden. It was a freezing night, and I could feel the brittle, frozen grass beneath my bare feet.
I lay on the ground and as I looked up into the night sky and the beautiful constellations of stars above me, I wanted to end it. I no longer had the strength or the will to carry on.
And then into my mind came the unmistakable image of Ethan’s face, his innocent eyes looking back at me. They were the eyes of a boy who had just been dealt the hardest blow any child can receive; a boy who didn’t deserve to lose his dad as well.
I picked myself up and went back into the house, where my sister immediately called an ambulance. I was in a terrible state, and over a year on, I still feel a huge sense of shame that I put myself in a place where life didn’t feel worth living any more. Shame that my own pain seemed more important than anyone else’s, even my own son’s.
As the early winter months of 2018 passed, the battle with the drink never really went away. It was an almost daily struggle not to stop on the way back from the school run and get something for the evening. If I could get home without stopping at the shop, I knew I had won for that day.
But on other days, the fear of the lonely night ahead was too much. I didn’t have the will to stop without help, and so, reluctantly at first, I agreed to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. It was there at last I found the strength to give it up for good.
Ethan went back to school just a week after Gemma died. It was on the advice of school and child bereavement experts, but I had no idea how he was going to feel when he left me. Or when he saw friends kissing their mums goodbye.
As I made his sandwiches, I remembered the snack notes I had sometimes written for him and put into his lunch box. Gemma usually sorted out his lunch; but when I did it, I’d started to put in little notes for him to find at lunchtime.
Sometimes they were just silly dad jokes, but other times they were words of encouragement. If ever there was a time for a snack note this was it. I pulled out some paper and wrote: Ethan — You’re Daddy’s SUPER HERO. Love you, Daddy xxx
For the rest of that school year, I wrote him a note every day. Whether he was having a good day, or a not-so-good day, I wanted him to know that Daddy was always thinking about him, and was proud of him. I put in lots of notes about his mum too; I wanted to make sure she was still a huge part of the conversation, and part of his life, even if only through memories.
Snacknote — January 24, 2018. Ethan, I see so much of Mummy in you. Her love, compassion and kindness. She lives on in you! I love you, Daddy xxx
The sands of certainty in Ethan’s life were shifting, but the snack notes were something he could depend on. And on those rare days when I forgot to write a note, I would drive to the school and drop one off.
Ethan has helped his father Simon through the darkest moments since the death of Gemma
Grief takes life’s brightest moments and makes them bittersweet. Even while you’re enjoying the sweetness of an experience or a memorable moment, you’re still feeling the searing pain and absence of the person who should be sharing that moment with you. Never did this feel quite as acute as the day Ethan got to be England football mascot for their friendly against Italy at Wembley in March 2018.
In the days and weeks after Gemma died, the world of football was unstinting in its support for us both. Too often in football we focus on the negatives — the money swishing around the game, the overpaid players, the flashy cars and lifestyles, the theatrical diving — but it’s at times such as this that you appreciate that there is a real togetherness within the football community. One message that really stood out was a letter from the Tottenham Hotspur manager, Mauricio Pochettino.
Although I’d covered plenty of Tottenham matches during my time at Sky, I had never really spoken to Mauricio apart from the occasional ‘Hello’ in the tunnel before a game, but he took the time out to write me a personal letter. I found it deeply touching.
And then the Football Association asked whether Ethan would like to be an England mascot. I replied with an emphatic yes, and a few weeks later, stood nervously near the tunnel as Wembley roared and Ethan walked out hand-in-hand with the England Captain for the night, Eric Dier. I don’t think I have ever felt such a sense of pride quite like it.
As my boy walked past with a look of nervous anticipation on his face and gazed up at the huge crowd surrounding him, I shouted his name as loud as I could. Somehow, above the cauldron of noise he heard me, looked to his left and gave me the biggest of smiles.
Here was my boy and a moment that was making me bubble over with fatherly pride. But I couldn’t hide the pain of knowing that Gemma wasn’t there to see it. I could picture her face, I knew what a moment like this would have meant to her.
Lean on me: Ethan at home with his father Simon. The presenter has had to learn not to let his grief rob him of his joy
And that’s when then it hit me afresh — whatever Ethan was going to go on to achieve in life, his mum would never be there to enjoy it with him. On an unforgettable night at Wembley, grief was trying to spoil the moment — I refused to let it, and as the national anthems reached their final notes, I kept saying to myself: ‘Don’t let the pain rob me of my joy.’
In many ways, that became my mantra from then on. Tough though it was at times, I had to accept that life was forever more going to be a strange cocktail of opposing emotions. I had to learn to accept that when those special moments came, the joy was always going to be accompanied by a sense of pain.
A few months later, Ethan’s summer holidays were looming. For the first time, it was going to be just the boy and me. Gemma had always handled all the holiday arrangements, packing the family planner with activities and weeks away. As I pored over my empty diary, I once again experienced one of bereavement’s many familiar feelings — dread. What on earth were we going to do?
It was another old Blue Peter pal, Katy Hill, who gave me a fantastic idea. Go on a road trip, she said — something so unlike any other holiday we’d had before, there was no chance of comparing it and finding it horribly wanting.
So it was decided: we would take a UK road tour in a camper van — which is how I found myself contemplating a new vehicle parked on our drive that July.
In so many ways this van, this lump of German-crafted metal, was a physical representation of just how much life had changed in the past eight months. Gemma had never been a huge fan of camping. In truth, she hated it, always preferring the comfort of a hotel. If someone had told me a year before that we’d spend next summer in a camper van, I’d have laughed.
And yet in so many ways, those six weeks with Ethan were everything I wanted them to be. There was lots of fun and laughter, plenty of new experiences to try, and precious opportunities for us to talk about everything that had happened. There were challenging times as well.
The thanks they gave each other
In a sweet note, Ethan named the things Daddy was getting right:
So Simon felt he must write a list of how Ethan was helping him, too:
Whether we were on the campsite or on a beach, we were still surrounded by families — and the constant reminder of how much our lives had changed. We were the odd couple. Sometimes I wondered whether we could even be described as a ‘family’ any more.
The evenings, with Ethan tucked up in his bed in the pop-up roof, were often a struggle. As I sat in my deckchair by the van, I looked on as the lights flickered in the nearby caravans, as couples and families enjoyed cosy evenings, and I felt so lonely and different.
Often, I would sit there, looking up at the stars, wondering … Is Gemma really in Heaven? Does Heaven actually exist? What if she can still see us? What would she make of how we were doing? She’d probably have laughed at me becoming a member of the Caravan and Motorhome Club!
In the final few days of our holiday, I asked Ethan whether he’d been able to enjoy life since Mummy had died.
His reply was predictably short, so instead I decided to ask him to name the five things Dad had done best over the past few months, and this is what he told me: 1. Keeping me entertained. 2. Treating me well. 3. Making nice food for me. (Massively proud of this one!) 4. Giving me lots of thumbs-up when you’re proud of me. 5. Being the best dad ever.
I felt it was only fair that I said something about him in return, so I told him the five things he had done best: 1. Being brave. 2. Being kind and thoughtful. 3. Making me laugh. 4. Comforting me when I’m sad. 5. Loving me unconditionally.
‘So how many marks out of ten would you give the holidays?’ I asked him. ‘I give the holidays a nine out of ten. I’ve missed Mummy a lot, but I loved being with you.’ Those words meant absolutely everything. We’d both missed Mummy hugely, it hadn’t been the same, it couldn’t possibly have been; but it had been good. Really good.
As times goes on, the intensity of grief does begin to lessen, and the symptoms become less pronounced. That doesn’t mean it ever leaves you. There might have been days at the school gate, or out socially, when I appeared to be OK on the outside, but the truth is, more often than not, I was in unbearable pain on the inside.
The trouble is that unless your face is etched with sorrow, or you’re breaking down in tears, people can’t easily see how you might be feeling.
It would have been easy to assume that I was OK, or that I was being strong and stoical. In reality, I was just trying to survive each day.
Some of my old friends did drop away as time went on.
The knocks on the door started to grow less frequent. The texts asking how we were doing dried up. But I made new friends, too, some of whom I met through bereavement groups and charities, and who perhaps knew better than most how to support Ethan and me.
And on January 26, 2019, quite unbeknown to me, they arranged a surprise birthday lunch for me at the Thames Lido in Reading — a lovely old Edwardian Ladies’ Bath that had been restored to a pool, spa, and restaurant.
It opened just one month before Gemma died (she’d have loved it) and over that first year, it became a place where I found peace and tranquillity. I thought I was just going for a simple lunch with Ethan; but as I rounded the corner of the restaurant, there, quite unexpectedly, were 14 of my friends laughing at the look of shock on my face.
They were some of my oldest friends and some of my newest — but all of them had played a huge part in standing alongside us in our toughest year. I was surprised, I was touched, but above all, I felt something tangible had changed.
Ethan knew what it was. As I drove him to school on the Monday morning, I asked him what the two best bits of the weekend were. He said: ‘Your birthday. And seeing you happy again, Daddy.’
Adapted from Love, Interrupted: Navigating Grief One Day At A Time by Simon Thomas, published by Trigger on June 15 at £12.99. © Simon Thomas 2019.
To order a copy for £10.39 (offer valid until June 18, 2019), call 0844 571 0640. P&P is free on orders over £15.
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