Jo would fall asleep with her leg crossed over mine. I miss that — I miss all of her
A year after her murder, MP Jo Cox’s husband talks about her with a candour that’s as heartbreaking as it is inspiring
AYEAR after the murder of his wife, Jo, Brendan Cox remains endlessly surprised by the capacity of grief to floor him at unforeseen times. Often it is the moments of unalloyed joy that presage the most crushing heartbreak. Last month, he spent half term at his cottage on the Welsh borders with his two young children, Cuillin, six, and Lejla, four. The absence of Jo left an aching emptiness: the previous May had been their last glorious holiday there as a complete family.
‘Jo had talked about it being the happiest time of our lives,’ he recalls, ‘and when we went back this time we slept in a tepee, canoed and made jam and elderflower champagne as we’d always done, and it was idyllic.
‘Then, when we were leaving, I watched the kids running along the riverbank holding hands, and it was a moment both of happiness and the most acute pain, because you realise what they’re missing and what Jo’s missing, and that’s the hardest thing to bear.
‘I cried because of how blissful the week had been, and how big her absence. There’s no fixing it. It’s chronic and terminal. Jo is gone for ever.
‘We went to Kenya at Easter, and I remember Cuillin saying . . .’ He pauses, blinks away tears and continues, ‘I remember him saying he wished his mum hadn’t died as she would have enjoyed it so much.
‘We talk about her all the time. She’s always present and I cry with the children and cry alone. It’s the permanence of her absence I still find hard to grasp. For six months after she’d died, I’d still pick up my phone and start writing a text to her.
‘Today, I don’t think I’ve stopped thinking about her for more than a minute. I feel like a walking wound, and grief hits me in vicious waves when I least expect it.
‘But I’m also defiant. I’m determined my kids will live extraordinary lives full of love and adventures, as Jo would have wanted.’
Jo Cox had been Labour MP for Batley and Spen, the Yorkshire constituency in which she was born, for just over a year when she was killed on June 16, 2016, in the middle of the EU referendum campaign. She was 41; energetic, smiley, compassionate; a wife, and mum to children then aged five and three.
The horror of her death defies comprehension. Thomas Mair, 52, a loner and Nazi sympathiser, riled by her support for refugees, shot her outside her constituency surgery then stabbed her repeatedly with a dagger, saying: ‘ Britain first. Britain will always come first.’
JO’S last words, to her two assistants, were typically selfless: ‘Get away, let him hurt me. Don’t let him hurt you.’
Brendan, 38, recalls that awful day when his life changed for ever: the call from Jo’s assistant telling him she had been attacked; his race to catch the next train from the family’s home in London. Then the dreadful finality of the news from Jo’s sister, Kim, as the train travelled north: ‘I’m sorry, Brendan. She’s not made it.’
Even as he confronted the unimaginable reality of his wife’s death, Brendan knew she would want him to envelop their children in love, and unite the country against the hatred that killed her. First, he had to break the news to Cuillin and Lejla, by then in the care of his parents in Reading, and still unaware of their mum’ s death. Overwhelmed by the dreadful enormity of the task, he first sought advice from an expert on child bereavement.
‘He explained they needed to process the fact that their mum was never coming back, so I knew I mustn’t soften the truth or dress it up in a mystical way that would confuse them,’ he says.
‘They had to understand the finality of it, but it’s hard when you’re very little — I find it hard myself. When I told them, it was almost unbearable to end the charmed innocence of their lives.’
He tells how, encouraged by his sister, they wrote down their memories of Jo and hung the pieces of paper on the apple tree in his parents’ garden; how they made it through supper and bath time, and then the crash came.
‘The children could no longer hold anything more inside their little hearts. They cried bitter, painful tears,’ he says. ‘They were distressed, wanting to see Jo, calling for her. I tried everything I could think of, but, in my exhausted grief, nothing seemed to work. When I began to sing they became even more upset. They wanted Mummy to sing to them, not me.’
He tried to answer their questions truthfully, but the inexplicable brutality of the facts these two tiny souls had to take in was harrowing.
‘I told them a bad man had killed their mummy because she was trying to help lots of people and he only wanted her to help certain people. They asked: “Why? Mummy was so nice.” There was incomprehension. It was hard to explain because I don’t understand myself how anyone could do such an evil thing.’
I ask him about Mair: surely he must feel murderous rage? He visibly winces at the name. He does not choose to dignify him with an identity.
‘I don’t focus on him at all,’ he says. ‘That’s not to say I don’t think about him. I do. But I want to deny him notoriety. Extremists commit these acts to try to gain attention and I think we have a duty not to give it to them. ‘ People sometimes ask: “Have you forgiven him?” Of course I haven’t. If I felt there was genuine repentance, I’d have to think about it. But there has been no remorse. ‘The easiest thing would be to be consumed by hatred and fury. Instead, I focus on surrounding the kids with love, keeping Jo in their minds and celebrating her life.’ The children absorbed the truth in different ways, he says, and, despite his efforts to explain that death was permanent, regularly asked if they could bring their mum back to life. ‘I had to explain to Cuillin that his good idea that scientists might be able to inject life into her wouldn’t work,’ says Brendan. ‘ We also couldn’t make a new version of Mummy out of wood, as Lejla had suggested. I told them Jo was gone but that we would never forget her because we would always talk about her and we would always love her.’
His fears that his words may not have sunk in were allayed when Cuillin — named after the Scottish mountain range Brendan and Jo had climbed when she was pregnant — performed an impromptu song about his mum.
When Cuillin sang it he asked his dad to record it. Brendan transcribes the tender simplicity of its lyric in his moving book about his wife, with its heartbreaking lines: ‘We’ll talk about her. We’ll sing about her. All times. So that is a promise. We just love our mumma but now she’s dead.’
The children, meanwhile, still grappled with the finality of their mum’s death. It was only when, on the advice of a child psychologist — and against his own instincts — Brendan took them to see Jo’s body that they accepted its permanence.
He describes the visit to the morgue; chairs placed so the children could climb up to look into the coffin.
‘They touched Jo’s hair and spoke to her. “We love you, Mummy,” they both said, as
they sprinkled love hearts over her,’ he recalls.
There were many such affecting moments. On the day of the funeral, when tens of thousands of mourners lined the route the cortege took through the West Yorkshire towns of Batley and Heckmondwike, Cuillin peered from the window of the car and said: ‘I knew that people loved Mummy, but I didn’t know this many people loved her.’
The paradox of Jo Cox’s death is that it was driven by hatred but created a global outpouring of love; it was intended to drive a wedge between communities, but, in fact, it brought them together.
This weekend, Britain will mark the anniversary of her death with the Great Get-Together, a series of street parties, picnics and barbecues designed to foster community spirit.
Brendan’s most fervent hope is that his children grow up with a sense that the world is fundamentally good: ‘I tell them that while evil and hatred make headlines, countless acts of love and heroism go unreported every day.’
Last week’s terrorist attack at London Bridge, which left eight people dead, happened less than half a mile from Brendan’s home, a houseboat on the Thames. I wonder how he reacts to the continued atrocities, and he says: ‘What goes through my head is always the sorrow of the poor victims’ families; knowing what it is like to cope with the long-term impact on all those lives.’
For the perpetrators he reserves a quiet, simmering anger: ‘I feel fury that there are some f*****s in the world who think this is an OK thing to do. I don’t care what their motivation is, whether they’re extremist ISIS weirdos or white supremacist weirdos.
‘It’s worse when people exploit it to spread hatred of all Muslims or migrants.
‘There are other ways. We have to take robust action, ensure police have the funds, the resources they need, and we also have to bring neighbourhoods and communities together.’
To this end he is co-founder of More In Common, an organisation aimed at building stronger communities and driving out extremism, a project given impetus by Jo’s death.
Last week Brendan joined the families of David Haines — killed by ISIS in Syria — murdered fusilier Lee Rigby and IRA bomb victim Tim Parry, to film a message of unity against the extremists who peddle hatred.
‘It was Jo’s sense of community that drove her into politics,’ he says, ‘and I know she would love it if her death helped in some way to bring communities back together.
‘I think we’re at a moment where the country is crying out for a sense of togetherness. We’re sick of division.
‘Jo was defined by her empathy, inclusivity and kindness and my mission is to fight for this and against the hate that killed her.’
He and Jo were kindred spirits. They met ten years ago while working for Oxfam and loved each other so fiercely Brendan does not believe he will ever find her equal.
‘It took me 30 years to find someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I count myself as extraordinarily lucky to have found her.
‘A friend had lost her husband, and Jo and I talked about what we would do if either of us died, and she said: “You should get married again the following week!”
‘She was joking, of course, but she definitely believed that I should do whatever would make the kids and me happy.
‘In principle, I’m sure she’s right, but I not sure it will ever happen. I’ve no interest in anyone else.
‘I miss Jo so much: her energy, her enthusiasm, the endless lists we’d make planning our projects and adventures. We had rows, of course. There were times when we annoyed the hell out of each other, but we left nothing unsaid.
‘I’d often send her a note or a card telling her how proud I was of her, and every night, she’d fall asleep with her leg crossed over mine.
‘I miss that. I miss all of her.’ He blinks away tears. ‘She knew how intensely I loved her because I told her all the time.’