The mother of the late cancer campaigner says the hardest part was “knowing I couldn’t do anything”.
The mother of cancer campaigner Dame Deborah James says her daughter told her she did not want to die in a late-night chat, just days before her death.
“The hardest thing was knowing that she was going to die and, as a mother, knowing I couldn’t do anything about it,” Heather James told BBC Breakfast.
She said Dame Deborah had lived a full life “with no regrets”, but added: “She did say ‘I don’t want to die’. And that’s the hardest, saddest part.”
Dame Deborah died in June, aged 40.
In the final weeks of her life, Heather became Dame Deborah’s main carer. The campaigner and host of the BBC’s You, Me and the Big C podcast had been diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2016.
In May, Dame Deborah announced she was receiving end-of-life care for bowel cancer and raised millions for cancer research before her death.
Heather told BBC Breakfast how her daughter was always full of energy, even as a child. “As a baby I think she came out like that, we never got any sleep at night with her when she was born.
“She never had enough hours in the day, even when she was so poorly with cancer, she made the most of it.”
The mother of two was given a damehood for her fundraising efforts by the Duke of Cambridge at her parents’ home in Woking, in Surrey, where she had chosen to stay in the final weeks of her life.
When Heather was told Prince William was coming to her garden, she says she was shocked and told her family she first needed a new lounge.
But she said the duke “put us so much at ease”. “He was just like one of my son-in-laws. He just sat down with us and he was so lovely, I think he is a people’s king.”
Image source, Heather James
After her diagnosis, Dame Deborah, a former deputy head teacher, started a cancer blog, before writing for the Sun newspaper and becoming a BBC broadcaster.
She launched a new fund, called the Bowelbabe fund, to raise money for research into personalised medicine for cancer patients. It surpassed £1m in less than 24 hours – smashing her initial goal of £250,000 – and has now raised more than £7m.
Heather said the last eight weeks of Dame Deborah’s life were probably the “best eight weeks” the family shared together.
“Even though she died at the end of it, how can you not love what she did in that eight weeks?” she said, adding that the success of the fund helped the family cope.
In the final days of her life, Dame Deborah wrote the final chapter of her second book, How To Live When You Could Be Dead.
“That must have been the toughest to write for her, because she knew she only had days left,” Heather said. “She could still have the beautiful ability to write right up to the end.”
She said her daughter had asked her to continue and enjoy her own life and to do her justice, adding: “Not just live life, enjoy living life and live it to the best that we can. So I think we owe that to Deborah.”