Kelsey Parker on finding the strength to make it through unbelievable tragedy

Independent

3 days ago

Kelsey Parker has suffered more tragedy in her young life than most people would have to deal with in a lifetime.
The entrepreneur and podcaster endured the nightmare of seeing her husband, The Wanted singer Tom Parker, battle and eventually die from a brain tumour at the age of just 33, three years ago.
And after finding love again with tree surgeon Will Lindsay, she became pregnant – but her new-found happiness was destroyed in June when her baby, Phoenix, was stillborn just a week before his due date.
Yet despite such incredible heartbreak, Parker, 35, is finding the strength to carry on, for the sake of her beloved children Aurelia, aged six, and Bodhi, four, and through her spirituality.
'My spirituality helps so much, because if I didn't have this, I don't know how I would get through a day,' she reveals.
'I feel Phoenix, and I look for the signs, and I feel like he's with me and the kids all the time. I am so happy that I found spirituality, because that's helped me through this massively. And I think that if I didn't find that on the journey with Tom, I would be so lost right now.'
Parker, who was in a relationship with Tom for 13 years and married him four years before his death in 2022, says her children are what make her carry on.
'Even with Phoenix, I had to get up the next day and be a mum,' she says. 'My kids are my saving grace – they get me out of bed in the morning. They've been through so much – they're four and six and they've lived such a life already, that life has to continue for them.'
Life has to go on without their daddy, of course – but what have they been told about what happened to him and their baby brother?
'That Phoenix is now an angel in the sky with Daddy, and Daddy's now looking after him,' says Parker.
'It is what I believe. When you say everything happens for a reason, oh my God, that's really hard to think. But there's got to be a purpose, there needs to be something to get you through, and it's whatever you believe, isn't it?
'We're not just dying and not going on to anything else. I get signs all the time, so there's no way that when you die that you're just gone. There's absolutely no way. So that's where spirituality comes into it, because it's all about the journey of the soul.'
Parker, who hosts the Mum's the Word podcast with her best pal Georgia Jones, wife of McFly singer Danny Jones, explains that she found spirituality when Tom was dying and she was searching for a way to come to terms with the terrible situation her little family found itself in.
She says: 'When Tom was still here, I had to find something, because I was like 'this is so cruel'. I was 35 weeks pregnant with Bodhi and I had Aurelia who was only coming on 15 months, and I thought how can life be this cruel to us, how can this be happening for us?
'We had the perfect life, and it obviously got flipped upside down. And then, by finding spirituality, you know that when they've gone, what reason they've gone for, and it gives you that bit of peace.'
When Tom – who was also a 'massive, massive believer' – died, Parker says his soul left his body, but she stresses: 'I could feel his soul leave him, but his energy is still here. We learn it in science – energy can't be destroyed. It can only be transferred.
'I just think, when we look at the world around us, there's got to be more to it than you live and you die and that's it.'
Nevertheless, because they can't see Tom any more, photographs have brought comfort to the family. Pictures of Tom and Phoenix are incredibly precious to Parker, and that's why she's supporting the Virgin Media O2 and Hubbub Community Calling initiative to encourage people to donate unwanted, working smartphones to those who need them, after first backing up photos and videos on the old phones so they're not lost forever.
Virgin Media O2 research estimates there are a whopping 123 million unused devices gathering dust in drawers in the UK, and 46% of people are holding on to them due to sentimentality about the 27.7 billion memories they contain.
'I know when you have a device, you don't want to get rid of it because you feel like it holds so many memories,' says Parker. 'But this is a magical campaign, because when you back pictures up and make memory books, then what use is the old phone when it could help others?
'They're a lifeline for people who are homeless, or women fleeing domestic abuse, or even for those in my situation who need to speak to a bereavement nurse.'
Parker has backed up her old phones and donated them to Community Calling, and adds: 'I've got pictures of Phoenix, and it was Tom's birthday on Monday, so I shared videos and photos of him on my Instagram, because that's how you remember people that aren't here any more.'
But photographs don't assuage grief, so how is she coping with her double loss?
'It's three-and-a-half years down the line,' she says, 'and now I'm living with grief again, and it's a different kind of grief. But I've got to be strong and I've got to try and move forward and live my life for Phoenix.'
And she says her children seem to grasp that they won't be meeting their baby brother or seeing their daddy again. 'They completely understand everything,' she says confidently. 'Aurelia has been here before – I always think about it. She's been sent to me because she understands absolutely everything. She's been really helpful this time around – even with Tom, she understood her dad wasn't coming back.
'He's with the angels.'
She stresses that she has no problem talking about Tom, and in fact: 'I love talking about Tom. On his birthday, when we were celebrating him, we were talking about memories of what he'd done, and it's a beautiful thing to do.
' People suffer so much in their grief. But we're all going to deal with grief, because the one thing we're guaranteed in this life is we're all going to die. But we're absolutely terrible about talking about death – we can't cope with the fact that death happens.'
And the brave mum adds, wistfully: 'Life is so precious, but it's so short. So live each day, celebrate each day that you're here. We all take life for granted.'
Kelsey Parker is supporting Virgin Media O2 and Hubbub's Community Calling initiative to encourage people to donate unwanted, working smartphones to those who need them.