‘Tom would want me to be happy’, Kelsey Parker blasts trolls as she dates new man & says there’s ‘no rulebook’ for grief
KELSEY Parker, 34, opens up on the loss of her husband, The Wanted’s Tom Parker, and learning to love again.
It’s hard for me to remember that first year without Tom.
I felt like a zombie, not really processing what had happened, and feeling constantly numb.
I carried on for our children – I had to.
Our daughter Aurelia [now five] was just two years old when Tom died in March 2022 and our son Bodhi [three] was only 18 months.
Looking back, it felt like an out-of-body experience – I was present, cooking meals and taking the kids to their swimming lessons, but I felt like I was watching myself from high above, buzzing around on autopilot.
They say that the first year is the hardest, but for me that wasn’t true.
It was actually after the first anniversary of Tom’s death that I really started to grieve.
It finally hit me that I wouldn’t see him ever again – that one year would turn into two, then five, then 10.
It really hurt, and the numbness disappeared.
I was heartbroken when Tom died, aged just 33.
Eighteen months earlier, we had been told he had a grade four glioblastoma brain tumour, and we both spent the following months doing everything we could to keep him alive.
He had chemotherapy, radiotherapy and we tried alternative treatments.
When he died, surrounded by his family and friends, my world fell apart.
But grief can be a funny thing – it doesn’t always hit you immediately, and for me, it’s been a process.
‘Couldn’t stop crying’
During that second year without Tom, I experienced every kind of emotion – anger and frustration, but I also felt a deep sense of sadness.
Some days, I just couldn’t stop crying.
I feel the pain that my children will grow up without him.
It’s like a punch in my stomach every time I consider the things he’s missed out on and the milestones he will forever miss.
I grieve for the future taken from us – I won’t grow old with the man I married.
But where there is darkness comes light, and now, nearly three years on from Tom’s death, I can smile without feeling guilty.
I realised I spent much of that first year harbouring guilt that I was still here while Tom wasn’t.
However, I’ve got to a stage in my grief journey where I’ve let that guilt go.
Tom would want me to be happy.
When I started a new relationship at the end of 2022, I had a lot of backlash online.
At that point in my healing journey, I needed someone to give me what my family and friends couldn’t – I craved company in the evenings – but, more than anything, I didn’t want to be treated like a widow.
People would cross over the street to avoid me, or if they did bump into me, they didn’t know what to say.
I was trolled when I stopped wearing my wedding ring
Kelsey
I felt like everyone was treating me with kid gloves, when in fact, I just wanted to be treated normally.
I hated that people felt they had to tiptoe around me.
Ultimately, the relationship didn’t work out, but I don’t regret it, even though I was trolled so badly for “moving on too quickly”, and told how awful I was for disrespecting Tom’s memory.
‘Far too soon’
Earlier this year, I decided to take my wedding ring off, and the trolling started again.
“I’d never do that,” said one stranger, while others commented it was “far too soon”.
But there is never a right time for anything when you’re grieving.
What I’ve come to learn in the years without Tom is that there is no rulebook.
We all grieve in different ways, and that’s OK.
I took my ring off because, for me, it was too painful to look at it every day. It doesn’t mean I’m forgetting Tom.
He will always be part of my story, even though he won’t be part of my future.
Am I ever going to be the Kelsey I was before Tom died?
No, absolutely not.
I’ve had to grow and I’ve had a lot to learn, but above all, I’m still trying to navigate a life without the man I thought I’d be married to forever.
- Kelsey Parker: With And Without You by Kelsey Parker (£9.99, Mirror Books) is out now.