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As preparations for Race for Life are underway, the much-loved TV Presenter and charity campaigner tells Katie McKenna what life has been like since losing her daughter, Caron.
It has been four years since Gloria Hunniford’s daughter, Caron Keating, passed away after fighting a long battle with breast cancer. She was 41. Caron was much-loved by the public and well-known for her various TV presenting jobs, including Blue Peter. In the years since Caron’s death, 68-year-old Gloria has worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the disease and keeps her daughter’s memory alive through the Caron Keating Foundation – set up by Gloria to raise awareness and money for all types of cancer. She is also patron for events such as Race for Life – and all this is in addition to her role as grandmother to eight grandchildren and wife to husband Stephen Way. She has also had a very successful broadcasting career and currently presents shows such as The Heaven and Earth Show. Here Gloria discusses what life is like when you have suffered the tragic loss of a child.
How did you become involved with Race for Life?
After Caron died, Cancer Research UK asked me if I would be patron of Race for Life which I was very happy to do. It’s a very emotional event – to look out at this mass of faces, it’s quite amazing and very emotional because people have messages and things on their back, some running in memory of people whom they’ve lost and some running in
celebration of the fact that their mum, dad, brother, sister or friend has beaten cancer. The nice thing about Race for Life is the fact that you can walk it, run it, crawl it, whatever you want as it’s only five kilometres and so it’s very manageable.
You also started the Caron Keating Foundation. What can you tell me about that?
The loss of a child is so deep, I call it the black hole really, and the black hole will always remain. It’s not something you can get over, or would want to get over anyway, because the loss is almost
unimaginable and goes to such a deep level. I’m not undermining any other form of loss because loss is relative to who it is but I’ve lost a child, a former husband and I’ve lost friends and losing a child takes you to a deeper place. I was kind of scrambling around at the time, not knowing what to do with myself or how to cope with anything and a woman wrote to me, a complete stranger, and said, ‘I understand your loss because I too lost a child but you now have to think of how you are going to carry Caron’s spirit forward. She had a big soul and remember that death is never the end, the soul is bigger than death and death is never the end.’ It was very profound. I read that letter and re-read it so many times and I just thought that this charity work was what I had to do: I have to do something in Caron’s name to help other people.
Was writing your book about Caron part of this grieving process as well?
It was two separate things really. Caron had already started writing two books, one about her childhood in Ireland and one about dealing with cancer. And so I was given the diaries. They were not
chronological diaries but were thought processes and those deep thoughts in the middle of the night and everything that goes along with it. So I thought I would finish off what Caron had started and pay tribute to her. But most of all I wanted to write the story so that her children would have it as and when they need it. I am the only person left alive that knows Caron’s story from beginning to end and therefore I felt very strongly that this is what I had to do. When I finished the book I felt a degree of peace because I felt that whatever happens to me hereon in, Caron’s boys have got the story when they are ready to read it.
How are her two sons coping now?
Children really are amazing. They were only 10 and seven when she died and while they appear
to be happy and getting on with it, it’s very hard
to know how deep loss like that goes and when
it will manifest. It might be when they are older,
in their teens or when they get married and start
to have babies that they miss their mum. They
have certainly got her spirit and her sense of humour and are one of the greatest joys in my life.
What would you say to someone who has experienced a similar loss?
I think that when someone is battling an illness of any kind, you have to reflect the mood that they’re dealing with it in. Caron always wanted to deal
with it in privacy, she didn’t want other people to know so we respected that and she was always very, very positive. I mean, I start the book off by saying that we never talked about death but only life. We reflected her positivity as best we could
but of course underneath we had all our own
feelings but we had to be positive if she was
positive. Another thing I’ll say is that miracles do happen, drugs are much better than they were and the news about cancer is getting better all the time. And that’s why the research that Cancer Research UK do is vital because we have to try and get rid of this hideous disease.
And so my advice to anybody coping with this at the moment is to try and stay as positive as you can. I tried to stay positive for my husband and my grandchildren. For me keeping busy and keeping my head busy definitely helped so work for me is a help. And as that woman in the letter said, get a new project, you have to have something else to think about.
While you have had a very successful
broadcasting career, have you now turned your attention more to charity work?
No, I still do a lot of TV such as Cash in the Attic and Through the Keyhole. I am writing a book about loss that will be out in September so it’s a busy year. But it is my joy to run the charity and I do it on a daily basis in one form or another whether it’s opening letters or dictating letters or making appearances to pick up cheques or whatever – I opened a hospice last week. It’s a very important part of the whole healing process really.
You have been in this industry since you were a child. Do you still enjoy it?
Yes, well my father was a part-time magician, he was a newspaper man by day and a magician by night. It was the days of homespun entertainment – it was big business. We did three, four or five nights a week sometimes. But that was all good
experience and got me used to the sound of my own voice and standing up on stage and introducing various things. I sang from when I was eight until I took up broadcasting which is a long time but yes I do still enjoy.
You have interviewed a lot of people in your career. Who stands out as your favourite?
I was raised on a diet of movies because it was the only thing to do in our small town in Northern Ireland, so to interview all those major movie stars was just fantastic – Kirk Douglas, Audrey Hepburn, Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart. But the one that really stood out was Doris Day because she doesn’t give many interviews and I interviewed her back in the 90s and went to her hotel in California and
that was fantastic. And someone like Cliff Richard
is a brilliant interviewee because you press a
button and off he goes – he has an opinion on everything.
Like Cliff, your faith is very important to you. How has it helped you?
Of course when you go through a tragedy and lose a child, it does test your faith because I’ve never prayed so hard in all my life as I did during the seven years of illness. But I purposefully tried not to go down the angry route or the loosing of faith root because my faith is very important to me and I have to believe that somewhere and somehow I will see Caron again.
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