A tearful Kate Garraway has revealed her daughter’s final words to her father Derek Draper before he died – and that the 17-year-old asked to carry his coffin at the funeral.
In her first interview since laying her husband to rest three days ago, the 56-year-old TV star spoke of her “outpouring of love for everyone that has supported me” during an appearance on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
“It’s just amazing. It feels like my emotions are at 110%,” she said.
She opened up to her co-presenters Richard Madeley and Susanna Reid – telling them she was told Draper had 24 hours to live a month before he eventually died.
Draper, a former political adviser and psychotherapist, died last month at the age of 56.
He was said to be one of the UK’s longest-suffering COVID patients after catching the disease in March 2020 and spending 13 months in hospital.
Speaking from her home via videolink on Monday, an emotional Garraway also told of the huge strength her daughter Darcey showed in the hours before Draper’s death.
The teenager helped carry her dad’s coffin at his funeral on Friday, which was attended by a host of politicians and celebrities.
Garraway said both the children spent time with their father on their own, adding: “Darcey said ‘If you can’t don’t this, we will be okay’ and I thought that was extraordinarily brave.”
On her daughter’s role as a pallbearer at the service, she said: “She insisted on doing it and I thought it was a beautiful thing.”
Addressing how it felt when she was told Draper would not survive a serious downturn in his health, she said: “It was one of those ‘stop the clock’ moments, where you want the world to stop.”
Asked how she managed to keep it together while caring for her husband for four years, she said: “I’m not sure I did it very well. I think I relied on everybody else, like we all do.
“I think I’ve got a massive debt to so many people and not least to Derek, actually, because his spirit and fight to keep going, never once did he say ‘I don’t want to try. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do that.’
“Nor have the children. The children have been extraordinary throughout.”
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She said son Billy, 14, had returned to school today – and confirmed she will return to GMB on Thursday.
“I am looking forward to coming into the world and connecting with everyone again,” she said.
“Thank you for having me back but have a little patience, I might be a bit rusty.”
“I’m going to be looking forward to a blow dry,” she joked.
“I’m going to be finding fake eyelashes. I’m going to be very much looking forward to applying fake tan.
“Don’t worry, I will be a little bit more respectable by Thursday.
“I’ll be doing a lot of homework between now and then because I feel like I’ve been in a very small bubble.”
Of Darcey and Billy, she added: “For their grieving, we are in the foothills, we know there is a long way to go.”
However, she said she is looking to the future, adding: “A new life starts now. I don’t quite know how it’s gonna be. But grief isn’t containable in a day or a month or a year.
“I think some people say: why are you going back to work? Well, everybody does have to, don’t they? Life has to start.”
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Garraway added she has received “extraordinary” messages of condolence from unexpected places.
“I had the most beautiful letter from David and Victoria Beckham – handwritten, very good handwriting… that was Darcey’s observation,” she said.
“And from the Royal Family – Catherine and William sent a beautiful letter, and I know Catherine has been in hospital herself.
“Even the King, because there is somebody who knows about grief, that anticipatory grief where you know something has a risk of happening and how different it is when it does happen.”
