Dame Deborah James’s final advice to her children Hugo, 15, and Eloise, 13 was to ‘be brave’ in life and ‘only marry for love’
- The mother revealed her final advice in How to Live When You Could be Dead
- READ MORE: Meet the London banker who helped his wife battle with her terminal bowel cancer diagnosis
Dame Deborah James told her children to only ‘marry for love’ and to remain ‘brave’ throughout their lives in some of her final words of wisdom before her death.
The campaigner and podcast presenter, who died last June at the age of 40 from bowel cancer, revealed in a book she penned in the last months of her life some of the advice she had shared with her teenage children.
Writing in How to Live When You Could be Dead, Dame Deborah, who has raised more than £11 million for cancer charities through the Bowel Babe Fund, spoke about the lessons she wanted to impart on Hugo, 15, and Eloise, 13 before she died.
The Mirror reports the headteacher wanted her two children to realise that life ‘doesn’t always go according to plan’.
It comes as a new documentary filmed in the last months of the mother’s life reveals she left her husband Sebastien a list of women he ‘could not hook up with’ following her death.
Dame Deborah James, who died from bowel cancer last June at the age of 40, revealed in her book How to Live When You Could Be Dead that she encouraged her children Hugo, 15, and Eloise, 13, to be ‘brave’ and ‘only marry for love’
As the host of You, Me and The Big C approached the end of her life and was receiving palliative care, she recorded some of her final thoughts in her book.
She wrote that she had told her children: ‘Don’t leave the world and all it has to offer until retirement — experience it now. Learn to balance living in the now and being present in the moment with your plans for the future (although this may be the hardest lesson of all). Marry only for love.’
In Deborah James: Bowelbabe in Her Own Words, which aired on BBC Two this evening, viewers were able to hear more of the cancer campaiger’s words of wisdom.
The bowel babe revealed she believed her cancer diagnosis made her a ‘better mum’ as it led her to change her priorities after years of being a ‘workaholic’.
She said: ‘I was very career-driven, a workaholic.
The bowel babe, who has raised £11 million for cancer charities, also revealed in a BBC documentary that she believed cancer had made her a ‘better mum’
‘[I would] leave my house at 6:30 in the morning and come back at 7:30 at night.
‘I was never there at any sports days, plays, whatever it was. I had my priorities wrong but I didn’t know it at the time.’
However, Deborah’s declining health meant she was ‘forced’ to rethink her work-life balance.
During the recording of one of the You, Me and the Big C podcast episodes, Deborah added: ‘I actually had to learn to become a mum again.
‘I never did the whole mum thing and actually, it’s been brilliant.’
Admitting that she never took an ‘earth mother’ approach to parenting, the late mother-of-two added: ‘I’ve got a much better relationship with my kids as a result of my cancer.
‘I think it changes you. I wish something else had changed me.’
Elsewhere in the documentary, Dame Deborah joked about leaving her husband Sebastian Bowen a list of women she didn’t want him to ‘hook up with’ after her death.
Dame Deborah described her husband as an ‘eligible bachelor’ who would likely attract a lot of female attention in future.
But she revealed there were a few women in their lives who she worried would make a beeline for Sebastien and jokingly made a list of their names so he would avoid getting romantically involved with them.
She said: ‘I had a list of girls that I was like, right, they’re going to pounce on my husband.
‘And so I listed off a couple of names that I said that I would do my damned hardest to come and haunt him if he hooked up with those people, which I thought was absolutely hilarious.’
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