The long goodbye

Kate Garraway shares a moving tribute to her late husband Derek Draper

In March 2020, at the height of the first lockdown, Good Morning Britain presenter Kate Garraway’s husband Derek Draper was admitted to hospital with COVID-19.

He went on to spend 214 days on a ventilator and nearly four months in an induced coma, losing 8st, as well as his ability to speak properly.

Although he moved back home in April 2021, following13 months in hospital, Draper continued to need round-the-clock care for lasting organ damage.

He was readmitted to intensive care with life-threatening sepsis in August 2022, before sadly dying on 3 January this year, aged 56, after suffering a cardiac arrest.

Now, following on from her National Television Award-winning documentaries Finding Derek and Caring for Derek, Garraway shares the emotional truth of her husband’s illness, and the realities of the family’s life over the last four years, in her new film Derek’s Story.

‘Derek lived on and on through situations that they didn’t think he could, so I think there’s a little bit of peace, but there’s also a sense of unreality about it,’ says Garraway, 56, who was by Draper’s bedside when he died.

‘It was a huge honour to be there with him through those last hours, especially when I think about all the people during the pandemic that didn’t have that. I felt like it was a lovely thing to get to do that for Derek. I wanted him to know I wasn’t giving up because if he was trapped, as they believe he was, inside a body that was very damaged and failing, I didn’t want him to think that we were departing him.’

EMOTIONAL PRESSURE

The political lobbyist turned psychotherapist married Garraway in 2005, and the couple have two children. Throughout Draper’s long illness, Garraway was always refreshingly candid about the emotional pressure it placed on daughter Darcey, now18, and son Billy,14, and that honesty continues in Derek’s Story.

However, although the film celebrates Draper’s life and his extraordinary battle for survival, Garraway says there’s still a long road ahead for the family.

‘We have to pick ourselves up, which is what Derek did and would want us to do,’ she says. ‘Grieving will continue. We’re in the foothills. Anyone who’s been through it will know there’s a long way to go.’