Family vow to celebrate Christmas for Laura Nuttall

The family of Laura Nuttall, who ticked off a bucket list while living with cancer, have said they will celebrate Christmas on her behalf.

The 23-year-old was originally given 12 months to live after being diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018.

This will be the family's first Christmas without Laura, who died in May.

Her mother said the grief was still "very raw" but they planned to continue their festive traditions for Laura.

"In our eyes, Laura is very much still with us because we talk about her all the time," Laura's mother, Nicola Nuttall told BBC Radio Manchester.

"But also, every time you do talk about it, it's like knocking the top off the scab and everything is still very raw.

"Nothing's healed, but we can keep a protective cover on the grief for most of the time and just keep functional and not think too hard about it and almost pretend it hasn't happened."

Despite the grief, the family plan to celebrate Christmas on Laura's behalf, starting with the charity event she set up in 2019.

The event takes place at the family's soft play centre, Giddy Kippers, on Boxing Day and provides 200 low-income families with a hot Christmas meal and a present.

"We invite families that are struggling and refugee families and people from the domestic violence unit and we do Christmas dinner for about 200 people," Mrs Nuttall said.

"They are recommended to us through schools and social workers and things like that and so we have got 200 presents to wrap for that.

"Then we'll take them down on Christmas Eve and get that set up.

"It's quite traditional, it wouldn't feel like Christmas if we didn't do that," Laura's sister Gracie Nuttall said.

The family said they would also be honouring Laura's Christmas traditions at home on the day as well.

"It was never about the presents with Laura, it was giving other people very oddly-crafted and slightly bizarre presents," Gracie said.

"We'd always open presents upstairs, mum and dad would start making Christmas dinner and every year me and Laura would sit and we'd watch Flushed Away, which isn't even a Christmas film, but it just became our little Christmas tradition.

"So I'll be doing that for her this year."

Laura, from Barrowford, was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, following a routine eye test and was later found to have eight tumours.

Despite her diagnosis and years of treatment, she went on to work her way through her list of ambitions, which saw her meet Michelle Obama, command a Royal Navy ship, graduate from the University of Manchester and present the weather on BBC North West Tonight.

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