I'M DETERMINED TO ENJOY MY LIFE AGAIN'

After husband Derek Draper's death last year, Kate Garraway is looking to the future for her and her family with an exciting new project

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The past five years haven't been kind to Kate Garraway. And yet the Good Morning Britain presenter says this year she is determined to "grab life with both hands and squeeze out as much joy as possible", for herself and for her two children.

"I can begin to see a new positivity for the three of us - I am hoping," she says cautiously. "Where we don't look back and remember: 'This time last year, we were doing this or that with Dad...' but focus on the future.

"Derek would want me to be grabbing life, because you learn how fast, and how easily, it can be snatched away," she adds. "I know he'd be saying: 'You've got to get out and live, because I can't." Her beloved husband Derek Draper, a former political advisor turned psychotherapist, died in January 2024 after a Covid-19 infection in 2020 left him incapacitated and in need of roundthe-clock care. Kate, who would have celebrated her 20th wedding anniversary with him this year, and their children Darcey, now 18, and Billy, 15, went into a "holding pattern of shock", from which, she feels, they are slowly emerging.

After their first Christmas without him, they filled their house with friends including a group of teenagers when Darcey threw a party. "Teenage parties - always a moment of terror for a mother," says Kate, grimacing.

Yet Derek's absence, and Kate's sorrow, is still evident when we speak. "Grief is such a strange thing - it's so final and complete. But somehow your brain tricks you, and there are moments you forget and it bites you on the butt," she adds.

"Only the other day, I finally got round to hanging a picture that's been waiting for years. Standing back, chuffed with my work, I thought: 'Derek will love this when he sees it.' Then in the same second, I remembered and a whole tsunami of sadness at what is lost swept over me.