Sky News presenter Colin Brazier has opened up about how the kindness of strangers has touched his family following his wife Jo’s devastating cancer diagnosis.
Jo, formerly head of foreign news at Sky, was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer more than five years ago. She has since been told her cancer has returned and is terminal.
The couple and their six children are currently preparing for the inevitable. In a bittersweet piece for the Catholic Herald, the 49-year-old spoke of how she had “touched many people with her ebullience, common sense and kindness”, which meant dozens of friends and acquaintances had reached out since hearing the news.
The compassion shown by these people has clearly meant the world to Colin. “She has been deluged with cooked meals, text messages and phone calls,” he wrote. “Flowers and notes have come from relatives, former work colleagues, neighbours, friends from church, members of the three choirs she sings with and Pony Club mums.”
He also told of how the “check-out girls” from their local supermarket sent Jo a bouquet, which brought him to tears. His children’s schools showed kindness by giving one of his daughters a blue plastic card to place on her desk to indicate that she might be “a little blue”. A senior staff member also offered to do the school run.
At such a difficult time, all of these small but significant acts have made life that tiny bit easier for the presenter and his family, who have been able to prepare for the end. He described the acts of kindness as “little short of a revelation”.
Ultimately, Colin is glad he and his family have time to say goodbye to Jo. Quoting AA Gill, he wrote: “It is actually a great privilege to have time to prepare for Last Things. Pity more those who fall foul of the loose ends and unsaid goodbyes of a fatal motorway crash.”
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