Kate Garraway: ‘I’m living on a knife edge!’
GMB’s Kate Garraway has been trying to distract herself and find ‘hope’ in life– as her husband remains seriously ill after Covid…
It’s a scenario only those of us who have had seriously ill loved ones can even begin to identify with, but finding a way to cope while her husband lies seriously ill in hospital is understandable to all. And Kate Garraway has explained that her newfound love of gardening is helping her to stay positive as she continues ‘living on a knife edge’.
Her husband, Derek Draper, has now spent over six months fighting against Covid-19 and its devastating after-effects.
Talking about how she copes watching her husband cling to life, the GMB presenter explained, ‘The garden is past, present and future in one place. By planting plants and nurturing them to grow, it gives you hope for the future.’
Heartbreakingly, asked by her co-host, Piers, about her favourite plant, Kate,
53, responded, ‘I like weeds. Something about them fighting for life…’
Kate previously revealed how planting bulbs has also given her and children, Darcey, 14, and Billy, 11, a sense of hope during their dad’s hospitalisation.
‘ When you’re living on a knife edge, doing something that gives you a future just helps with a sense of progress… You can’t think short-term in a garden, you have to plan.
‘You have to have hope. By planting something and believing Derek will see it… that gives us a sense of future.’
Kate added that her garden has been ‘the most important space’ for her family over the past six months.
That said, she also told the BBC Two show Gardeners’ World it hasn’t always been easy – and she had to adjust what she was growing: ‘It’s rather sad because the radishes came, they’re one of Derek’s favourite vegetables, and we ate them and he still wasn’t better.’
Kate then thought of bulbs which were more ‘long-term’ and set to work planting them with her children: ‘I’d say, “Dad will be better by then”... And of course, now that it’s been so long, we’ve got a huge basket of bulbs, so that when Dad comes home, the place will be full of colour.’
What a lovely thought… We pray that happens, Kate.