Alan Titchmarsh has written heartfeltly about the tragic passing of his parents this year, as well as about his own feelings and geographical setting at the time of the difficult circumstances.
TV icon Alan Titchmarsh has talked the heartbreaking moment his wife told him his father had died of a heart attack.
Speaking on the Lessons From Our Mothers podcast hosted by Isabella Branson and Cressida Bonas, Alan had been discussing the death of his mother when he compared it to the death of his father who passed away at the age of just 62.
Alan suggested that while losing both of his parents was difficult, his father’s passing was less unexpected, and that losing both had been harder.
He went onto explain how he had only heard about his father’s death when he returned to his Hampshire home after doing some filming in Stoke.
Alan said he drove up to Yorkshire to be with his mother and support her when his wife informed him of his father’s tragic passing.
He claimed that because he had a heart attack and there was no way it was going to happen, his father’s death was “in a way harder in]86.”
I spent the Garden Festival in Stoke-on-Trent when I was a child.
My wife informed me that my dad had died that afternoon and that he had a heart attack while I was filming the Garden Festival in Stoke when I drove all the way back home.
So I immediately left the car and drove back to Yorkshire, leaving Stoke-on-Trent, to visit my mother. It was very difficult, not just losing a parent, but also finding comfort in a parent whose other half was so important to them. I can’t help but feel terrible about it.
Not once has Alan mentioned his parents’ passing. The 76-year-old described his final encounter with his mother and how emotionally vulnerable they were before writing about their final relationship in his book “Knave of Spades.”
The Gardeners’ World presenter said: “From above the sheets only her head and her right hand were visible. Her hair was still dark, even at 78, though she had never in her life coloured. Hair dye would be for ‘that dame’. After an hour or so I got up to go and she opened her eyes. ‘You going?’
She nodded off. We had never been particularly open-minded about our feelings as a family. Every time we met, we exchanged kisses and hugged, but never exchanged words.
You simply didn’t do that in Yorkshire, I guess. not in the 1960s or 1950s. However, it no longer seemed important. I told her I loved her a lot as soon as I gave her a squeeze.
She used all of her strength to repress it. She said, “Not as much as I love you.” I sat down next to her and sat down.
I turned around and turned back to her at the hospital ward. She winked at me as she sluggishly waved her fingers higher than the sheets. I last saw her when I saw her. She passed away peacefully in her sleep two days later.
Source: Mirror
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