‘Losing my darling boy is a torture I can hardly bear to remember...’
THE death of their son Ivan left David Cameron and wife Samantha in ‘darkness’, the former prime minister said.
Mr Cameron wrote poignantly about their final moments with their eldest child, as they held him in hospital after medics stopped treatment while the six-year-old succumbed to organ failure.
He said: ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing, can prepare you for the reality of losing your darling boy in this way. It was as if the world stopped turning.’
The former Tory leader added: ‘It was a torture that I can hardly bear to remember.
For Samantha, the mother who bore him and who loved him so deeply, it was a torture that was tearing her apart.’
Ivan was born with Ohtahara syndrome, a rare condition which left him with severe epilepsy and development problems. He died in 2009.
Mr Cameron said the diagnosis had been an ‘immense shock and challenge’. He admitted the difficulty of caring for a profoundly disabled child had taken his marriage ‘near to breaking point’.
He wrote: ‘My friends say that the experience of having Ivan and helping to care for
him changed me a lot. I am sure they are right.’
He said he lacked ‘the real patience and selflessness’ needed to be a great carer, but said his wife never failed. Despite watching Ivan endure painful seizures, the parents found a ‘ resilience’ and ‘strong bonds of love’.
After Ivan’s death, when Mr Cameron was leader of the Opposition, then-prime minister Gordon Brown led tributes and adjourned the Commons for the day. Mr Cameron said he had been moved by the gesture, but said the days before Ivan’s funeral were a ‘blur’, adding: ‘There was nothing but darkness for us.’ Mrs Cameron found an inscription by poet William Wordsworth for Ivan’s headstone, which he said summed up their feelings.
It reads: ‘I loved the Boy with the utmost love of which my soul is capable, and he is taken from me – yet in the agony of my spirit in surrendering such a treasure, I feel a thousand times richer than if I had never possessed it.’ Mr Cameron said he and his family visit the grave at a church near their Cotswolds home frequently. He said: ‘Having Ivan taught us so much. About unconditional love. About our total devotion to each other.’
‘Marriage near breaking point’