Tom Parker’s widow Kelsey is deserving of a new future with a new man – life is short, says Ulrika Jonsson
ATTENDING The Sun’s moving Who Cares Wins awards on Tuesday night, I saw that, despite everything Kelsey Parker has endured this year, she hasn’t lost her sparkle.
She looked gracious and content.
None of us can really know how she must be feeling having lost her beloved husband Tom, father of her two young children, to a brain tumour at the end of March this year.
So news this week that she could be in a relationship with someone new brought a little happiness to my heart.
Many of us have followed the story of Kelsey and The Wanted singer Tom from when he announced his diagnosis until his passing.
We have invested sympathy and goodwill.
READ MORE ON KELSEY PARKER
But life throws curve-balls — Kelsey knows that.
And the relationship she has reportedly started is with a man, Sean Boggans, who was convicted of killing another man with a single blow to the head.
He has served time for his crime.
It may turn out a cruel twist of fate that Kelsey, who is so desperately deserving of love and happiness, becomes involved with someone many of us would cross the road to avoid.
Most read in The Sun
Deep void
Our instinct towards her is one of protection. We want the best for her, we don’t want her to come to any more harm, and because of that we immediately jump on our moral high horse.
I presume Kelsey knew about Sean’s past and it wasn’t a shock when she read about it.
And even though some of us feel we have got to know her over the past year or so, we do not know Sean or what it is he might potentially be bringing to her life.
Grieving is not a linear process, there is nothing prescriptive about it.
Progress is never simple and we all grieve in different ways.
It’s a fact that women who lose a partner tend not to get with a new one as quickly as do their male counterparts.
It may be because there are more widows than widowers and women tend to live longer.
It may also be that men are more emotionally reliant on their partner so have a greater need for a new one. Who really knows?
But just because someone might be starting a new relationship does not mean they have moved on.
Moving on implies all that has gone before is suddenly forgotten and the bereaved is skipping with reckless abandon into a new life.
That would be impossibile for Kelsey. She is the mum of two very young children, aged two and three.
Her priority is and always will be those little angels, who she and Tom created together. They will keep her grounded.
But she is also a woman in her own right, and has talked about the deep void left by Tom’s passing.
I have always felt you never feel quite as alone as you do when alone with young kids.
Despite the strong circle of friends and family who surround Kelsey, she must have felt so incredibly lonely.
While everyone around her will doubtless be keen to help her on a practical level, it’s the emotional, psychological and physical needs that will be harder to support.
All she is doing now is trying to carve out some kind of different life for herself — away from being a mum but, most crucially, from that dark veil of being Tom Parker’s widow.
She is Kelsey and she is deserving — at just 32 — of a new life. It is not for us to decide when she is permitted to start that life.
Nor should we judge who that life should be with.
I dated a criminal for a short while, not that long ago. Some people might have thought I was bonkers.
But I took a considered view and my priority was the safety of me and my family — which I decided was unthreatened.
I know nothing about Sean and he could be a nightmare or knight in shining armour.
But since my brief fling with the criminal, I do know other men have hurt and damaged me emotionally with far worse consequences than the criminal ever did.
I’m sure Kelsey would agree that whoever comes into her life will never replace the love of her life, Tom.
Perhaps, most obviously, because he lives on in their children.
But if she is able to glean some moments of happiness in the company of someone else, away from being a mum and a widow, I hope she grasps it with both hands.
Life is short. Kelsey knows.
DARK SIDE OF FASHION
I’VE never been a high fashion or haute couture kinda gal.
Can you tell?
I do just feel it’s a lot of over-hyped nonsense – most of which I don’t understand.
Runways tend to be populated by skinny models wearing the most peculiar of things, which you wouldn’t even entertain for a fancy dress party.
So I shouldn’t really have been surprised when I saw fashion house Balenciaga – which dresses the likes of the Kardashians – had featured a campaign with a small child holding a teddy bear that was dressed in bondage gear, right.
After public outcry, the brand swiftly apologised, droned on about how seriously they take this sort of thing and how they’re intending to take legal action against the photographer.
So it’s just their fault? Really?
I’ve done enough photography, marketing and advertising shoots in my life to know there is always an army of people at every session.
The very idea that this might just have been a rogue photographer doing their own thing just doesn’t sit right.
I thought we were smarter about the sexualisation of young children nowadays.
When in the past big household names would feature young girls in G-strings and crop tops, there was outrage.
But a teddy in bondage gear – whose clever idea was that?
’PAUSE FOR A THINK
NHS ENGLAND chief executive Amanda Pritchard reckons “flexible working patterns” should be considered for menopausal women because they are often suffering silently and shouldn’t be expected to grin and bear it.
For many, the symptoms can be crippling, and include hot flushes, brain fog, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, anxiety and headaches, to mention but a few.
It can be horrendous.
So the idea that employers should consider making some “allowances” for women who are enduring this, by giving them “lighter duties” is, on the surface, welcome.
But while I am thrilled we are shining a light on the menopause and its collateral damage, I wonder if this won’t also create some resentment in the workplace from those who don’t suffer badly, or those who never have to go through the menopause.
Or from men who will somehow use it as an excuse for feeling marginalised and excluded from what they might consider to be “benefits”.
Like I know that some workers who don’t have children feel resentment toward colleagues who do – they might need to leave the office early, etc, and are afforded by their bosses a smidgeon of amenability.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t show some empathy toward “women of a certain age” and stage in life, but I do see potential trouble on the horizon.
I EXAGGERATE not, I am in a blind panic.
There may not have been much need for a passport over the past two years so my Swedish one has been gathering dust, without me giving it much thought.
Except that it runs out in February – and I’ve spent the past month or more trying, incessantly, to get an appointment at the Swedish Embassy to have it renewed.
I appealed to them in sheer, naked desperation and was told, “Tough luck”, “Keep trying” or, “Go to Sweden and have it renewed”.
Presumably the latter would only work on the basis I could travel before the ruddy thing runs out.
But even in Sweden there is a huge backlog and it could take up to two months.
Perhaps the Swedish ambassador to the UK, Mikaela Kumlin Granit, would like to give me a call and explain what’s going on.
Or, better still, take action and sort out this nightmare – I know I’m not alone.
Sun awards night joyously showed who really cares
THERE isn’t a lot of optimism around at the moment. These are dark times in which we live.
What with the sky-high cost of energy and so many other things, the light at the end of the tunnel seems dim indeed.
So it was such a heartwarming, uplifting, joyous privilege to spend the evening with nominees and winners of The Sun’s Who Cares Wins awards on Tuesday evening.
I got to meet the likes of Best Midwife nominee Wanda Warrington, and her granddaugher Amelia Chadwick, below.
The awards, to be shown on Channel 4 Sunday evening, were just the boost I had craved.
The evening honoured healthcare heroes in the NHS and our communities who do extraordinary things for others, many of them volunteers.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Read More on The Sun
It was a reminder that, even when times are so hard, there are people who don’t just navel-gaze in self-pity but step up to the plate, take action and help others.
I left with my faith in humanity restored.