Mum loved you to infinity and beyond
McManus son pays heart-rending tribute to wife
THE widowed son of JP McManus paid a moving tribute to his wife, who died suddenly in Barbados over Christmas, at a memorial service on the Caribbean island yesterday.
Fighting back tears, John McManus told mourners: ‘Life has changed irreparably for us all.’
Mother-of-three Emma McManus, née Ledbetter, died on December 30, aged just 40.
The Trinity College graduate was a daughter of ex-tennis star and businessman Peter Ledbetter and his wife Paula.
Emma had been enjoying postChristmas festivities with loved one sat the family’ s private residence near the Sandy Lane hotel and golf resort co-owned by horse-racing magnate JP McManus, when she suddenly complained of feeling unwell.
Yesterday, mourners gathered at Coral Ridge Memorial Gardens for the service, which was also watched by many online. John McManus told the small group of family and friends in attendance: ‘No words can describe the pain and sense of loss that I feel since my beautiful Ems passed away. She was the very centre of our family and the person who the kids and I turned to for everything.’ Casting his gaze towards the couple’s beloved three children. Milly, Lauren and Annie, Mr McManus added: ‘Mummy loved you to infinity and beyond.
‘You were the first and last thing she thought about every day. She was so proud of you all, and loved the hugs and laughter that we regularly shared.
‘Although we cannot see her any more, she will live on in our hearts. At any time we can look up at the Sun, the Moon, or the twinkling stars, and know that Mummy is there, looking down on us.’
In a touching love letter to his wife, he said he had ‘fallen in love with the most beautiful, kind and selfless person I have ever known’. ‘Your smile and sense of fun will live with, and in, me forever, and our souls are intertwined for eternity,’ he added.
Mr McManus, a native of Martinstown, Co. Limerick, and now resident in Chelsea, London, thanked his family and friends for their ‘love and support during this unbearably sad time’.
The couple’s three young children brought gifts symbolising their mother’s life to the altar, to where a photograph of Emma was laid, including a paddle tennis racket, a Werther’s Original sweet and a cookbook.
Mr McManus hugged his three daughters throughout the emotional service, which heard two heartfelt performances of songs by family friend Andrea Corr.
Introducing her performance of Billy Joel’s anthem She’s Always A Woman, Corr said: ‘I sang this song for Emma at her wedding ten years ago, so I will sing it again for her now, because she loved it.’
Corr fought back tears performing Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again, a love song by Andrew Lloyd Webber from his musical stage show, The Phantom Of The Opera. The McManus family also thanked Lloyd Webber, who is a neighbour of theirs on the island, for all his ‘love and support’.
Emma’s brother Nick Ledbetter described his sister as ‘elegant, loving, graceful, inclusive, intelligent, direct, fair’ and ‘radiant’.
‘She will live on in our hearts’