If love alone could have saved you, you would have lived forever... – KELSEY HARDWICK, WIFE OF TOM PARKER

TOUCHING FAREWELL TO WANTED'S TOM

- JESSICA GIBB and CONNIE RUSK

THE pain of loss etched on her face, Tom Parker’s widow Kelsey wept at his funeral as she and his bandmates spoke of their love for the young husband, singer, and dad.

Addressing The Wanted star directly in her pre-recorded eulogy, Kelsey Hardwick, 32, told the father of her two children, Aurelia, two, and 15-month-old Bodhi: “If love alone could have saved you, you would have lived forever.”

She said her soulmate had “truly lived a thousand years in thirty-three”.

Along with immense grief came laughter too when Kelsey spoke of their early days as a couple: “Tom told me he was going to be famous and wouldn’t have time for a girlfriend, but he wouldn’t leave me alone.”

With equally poignant humour, bandmate Max George, 33, joked of his duties as a pallbearer: “I could actually hear him saying ‘It’s about time’ as he carried us for the last 12 years.”

Tom died last month at the age of 33, 17 months after being diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour.

Family and close friends, including Liam Payne from One Direction, attended the private ceremony at St Francis of Assisi church in Petts Wood, South East London yesterday.

Earlier Kelsey had gripped the hands of her family as her husband was driven in a horse-drawn carriage along streets lined by hundreds of fans.

Max was joined by bandmates Jay McGuiness, Siva Kaneswaran, and Nathan Sykes as pallbearers. Oasis song Champagne Supernova played as they carried the coffin into the church.