Tom Parker's widow Kelsey Parker has revealed in a recent interview that her two-year-old daughter believes her dad "is on tour".
The Wanted frontman died aged 33 on March 30 following a battle with brain cancer after his diagnosis with stage 4 glioblastoma in October 2020.
Parker's widow Kelsey, 32, appeared on the ITV chat show Lorraine on Tuesday, June 14, to discuss the impact her late husband's death had on their family.
Kelsey shared that their daughter, Aurelia Rose, doesn't understand that her dad is "not coming", even after being "really blunt" and telling her that "he's dead".
Watch Kelsey's interview below:Lorraine mentioned a video Kelsey posted on Instagram in which Aurelia gets very excited when she sees Parker's book, Hope: My Inspirational Life, in a shop. Kelsey heartbreakingly explained: "Whenever she sees pictures of her dad, she’s like, ‘It’s my dad!’"
"She’ll be three at the end of this month. I’ve been really honest, she does still talk about him every day, and she doesn’t quite understand he’s not coming back," she added.
Kelsey and Parker got married in 2018, and also share a three-year-old son Bodhi Thomas. Kelsey said that while her son is still too young to understand the situation, it's been difficult for Aurelia, who still believes her father is on tour with his bandmates.
"She's a bit like, 'Well, you've been on tour, so is he going to come back from this?' She's just really confused by it," Kelsey explained. "She does ask me every day about him. We have little things around the house of Tom's, so she'll see his wallet and be like, 'Oh, that's Daddy's wallet!' And I'm like, 'Yeah, that's Daddy's wallet.'"
"So I’ve had to be really blunt and say he’s not coming back, that’s it, he’s dead and he’s not coming back because she doesn’t really understand," she continued. "She’s just really confused by it. She thinks he’s on tour. But we do then talk about him every day. She does ask me every day about him."
She said that her late husband wouldn’t have wanted them to be "sad" after his death.
"It's lonely at night, but I have to live my life," she said. "We have been through so much together. The love I had for him was like no other."
Since losing her husband, Kelsey told the host that the hardest part of grief is simply missing him.
"He was my actual best friend. I just loved him so much," she said. "I think it's that I don't get to text him when things happen and I don't get to call him. I think that's what I find really, really hard. I really miss him."
