Dame Deborah's mum says grief 'getting harder'

The mother of the late cancer campaigner Dame Deborah James says grief is "getting harder at the moment" as the amount of time without speaking to her daughter lengthens.

Heather James said talking about Dame Deborah, who died aged 40 in 2022, five years after her stage four bowel cancer diagnosis, helped "keep her alive" in the family's minds.

The Bowelbabe Fund for Cancer Research UK, set up in her name, has since raised £16m, Mrs James told BBC Radio Surrey.

She also said Dame Deborah's children were "wonderful" and she was very proud of them, but they would "always have to live with the fact that they haven't got their mum".

"I can see a lot of the traits in her daughter, she looks just like her as well," she added.

"But they all have her kindness and her hope and her enthusiasm for life, and I couldn't wish for anything more, because that is what you want in somebody."

She added that Hugo, 17 and Eloise, 15, were "very much involved" in the Bowelbabe fund and that their dad, Sebastien Bowen, was doing a "brilliant job".

Mrs James, who lives in Woking, where she cared for her daughter at the end of her life, said every so often there was a "flash", such as Eloise's recent 15th birthday, when her daughter's loss hits her.

She added: "Anybody out there grieving, I think it's getting harder at the moment.

"Two years on, the reality's hitting and the time [without] speaking to her has lengthened.

"We will always talk about her, and that keeps her alive in our minds and I think that's great. That's what, for me, is a great help."

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