Ivan’s death made world feel irrelevant, says Samantha Cameron
SAMANTHA CAMERON has told how the devastation of losing her son Ivan made everything else in the world feel “meaningless” to her.
The wife of the former prime minister spoke about the grief she suffered following the death of the couple’s eldest son when he was six years old – saying it was more life-changing than moving into Downing Street. Ivan, who died in 2009, suffered from Ohtahara syndrome – a rare form of epilepsy characterised by spasms – and cerebral palsy.
Mrs Cameron reportedly welled up when she mentioned his name while speaking about coping with the heartache brought about by his untimely death in an interview with The Times Magazine. She said: “Ivan dying is such a massive thing that everything else is irrelevant. It just overshadows everything. What goes on in the outside world becomes meaningless.
“It’s the biggest thing in my life. Being the prime minister’s wife was just a role.”
Mrs Cameron, 45, also said the difficulty of living with Ivan’s condition, and the treatment it required, helped prepare her for becoming the wife of the prime minister.
She added: “We managed to talk to each other about his death, but we also tried to keep a routine going so we didn’t fall apart completely. I didn’t want to forget about him. I was incapable emotionally of talking about him, but I felt awful being in a situation where I couldn’t talk about it.
“It is one of the reasons I am quite private; I can’t talk about it, but I can’t not talk about it. I think about him the whole time.
“It’s all so complex – nothing is ever black and white. There were so many emotions and that’s why grief is so hard. Like anyone else in my situation, I just kept going. You have to deal with it, because you have no choice.”
Mrs Cameron this week launched her own fashion range under the name Cefinn – which takes its first and last letters from those of her surname and the middle four from the initials of her four children, Elwen, Florence, Ivan and Nancy.
She said photos of Ivan still line the walls of the family home in Notting Hill and that they often visit his grave.