Kate Garraway devastatingly admitted to “torturing herself” by listening to her late husband Derek Draper‘s voicemail when he was in a coma.
The Good Morning Britain star shared the sad news about Derek’s death on Friday (January 5).
The 56-year-old had been battling severe long Covid complications for almost four years and recently suffered a cardiac arrest.
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‘Like torturing myself’
In a past heartbreaking confession, Kate once revealed that while Derek was in an induced coma back in 2020, she would call him in order to hear his “old voice”.
Opening up in her 2023 memoir, The Strength of Love, Kate told readers: “I knew that what I was about to do would be like torturing myself but I sensed this was the moment that I needed to push myself to the limit.”
I heard his ‘old voice’ on the answer phone.
She explained: “I called Derek’s old mobile number and heard his ‘old voice’ on the answerphone – so powerful, so in control, the soft Lancashire accent so familiar and now so distant from the whispered words we heard from Derek every day. I was floored, but I knew I had to.”
She went on to admit that she continued to “go deeper”, searching “his last texts to me and his emails going further back than the final heartbreaking ones he’d sent me from the hospital, before he was put into the coma”.
“Three years on, reading these day-to-day conversations brought me to tears,” she added tragically. “I felt full of regret that I hadn’t treasured this connection… more.”
Kate Garraway thanks public for support
While Kate has taken some time away from Good Morning Britain amidst her grief, she reached out to fans in a written message on Monday (January 8). Her colleague Susanna Reid read out the statement.
“Thank you so much for all the wonderful messages that you have sent me,” she said. “It really does mean so much to me, Darcey, Billy and all of Derek’s family.”
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