When you get married, you vow to stick together for better for worse, in sickness and health… but how many of us actually have to put our money where our mouths are, and prove that wasn’t just lip service?
Kate Garraway showed the reality of “for worse” and “in sickness” – mostly over Facetime just to compound her torture – in ITV documentary Finding Derek.
Her husband remains in hospital a year after being admitted with coronavirus, the sickest patient his team of doctors have treated who has lived.
As holiday cover on GMTV years ago, I worked with Kate, chatted to her in the green room, had our make-up done at the same time. Unlike so many others, beneath the foundation she was exactly who she is on the breakfast sofa. Warm, friendly, down to earth. A good laugh.
This was confirmed on I’m A Celebrity, too – but I already knew she was great. What I didn’t realise was that she’s basically superhuman.
(Image: ITV)
Of course many of us can’t watch something like Finding Derek without wondering how we would cope in – god forbid – similar circumstances. And you never really know how strong you are until – god forbid – you’re tested. But Kate isn’t just strong. She isn’t even just holding things together, against all odds, keeping life going for her children, and on screen every morning.
She’s also managing to hang on to hope and expectations, while attempting to be realistic. Finding the positives, the light in the darkness, without an ounce of self-pity.
When trying to process the possibility that the man she’s shared her life with for nearly two decades may never be the same, she says she’s trying to look at it as “a beautiful thing. I feel as though we might have to sort of fall in love again, find out who each other are again”.
Her resilience is astonishing. Humbling. Beyond admirable.
Kate’s in a nightmare alternate universe where her husband mouthing the word “pain” is cause for celebration, his tears of despair a fantastic breakthrough.
She calls in builders to adapt the house to Derek’s new needs, guessing, trying to predict, what they might be, all the while uncertain if, when, he might ever be able to live there again. She talks matter of factly about giving up her glamorous showbiz career to be his full-time carer.
That the kids seem OK is yet another miracle she’s pulled off.
At one point she interviews a nurse struggling to live with the long-term consequences of coronavirus, who tells her: “There is a limit to what one can endure.”
Kate nods, professionally.
She doesn’t have the luxury of acknowledging that at the moment.
The scenes where we see Derek are extremely moving. She’s forced to witness his distress over a phone screen rather than what most people would have taken for granted before 2020; that when a loved one is seriously ill in hospital, you’ll be able to hold their hand.
Still, she reassures him, soothes him, bolsters his spirits, tells him he is fantastic and that she is so, so proud of him.
I hope Kate feels the nation rooting for her, for Derek.
In the meantime, on she goes. On and on and on. What a woman. What a mother. What a wife.
Derek’s current situation is far from enviable, but my goodness, in one way he’s a lucky man.
Kate Garraway Finding Derek airs tonight at 9pm on ITV.
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