The devastated children of Jonnie Irwin weren’t “blissfully unaware” their dad was dying but didn’t have tearful final kisses and cuddles with the doting A Place in the Sun star, his wife has shared.
Jess, who shared sons Rex, five, and four-year-old twins Cormac and Rafa with Jonnie, has also revealed the moment she told the little boys their dad had died and “gone to heaven”.
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Why Jonnie Irwin didn’t tell his children he was dying
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Jess said she and Jonnie took the decision not to destroy their sons’ happiness by telling them outright that he was dying.
She said that Jonnie reasoned: “If you’ve only got a short time left why spend it in mourning and confusion?”
However, they knew that Jonnie was unwell, even if the word death wasn’t mentioned.
“The boys weren’t blissfully unaware. They heard me say hundreds of times: ‘Daddy’s sleeping’. They knew he’d lost his hair because he was having treatment and that no, he couldn’t go down the big slide because it might hurt him. But we didn’t want to put scary thoughts in the boys’ little heads,” she shared.
Instead, Jess revealed they’d come home from school and nursery and she’s send them upstairs to show Jonnie.
However, she said one day eldest son Rex “just wandered in and kissed Jonnie’s hand while he was sleeping”. She added the she thinks Rex had “sensed the energy had shifted a bit”.
And, she said, Rex doing that “of his own accord” would’ve meant more to the TV star than “forcing all the boys to cuddle him”. She said if that would have happened her husband “would have sobbed and it would have been a terrible memory”.
How Jess told the boys he was gone
Turning to the moment that she told the boys about Jonnie’s passing, Jess said she approached it with Rex first. Then she told her younger twins.
“I told Rex first, that Daddy had gone to heaven, in the sky, and he ran out of the room and hid. He said: ‘Why can’t the spaceman bring Daddy back?’ Then I told the twins. They asked: ‘How did the angels carry him up to the sky?’ I said: ‘Angels have special powers.’ It was all toddler talk. The conversation will change as they get older.”
Rex has now told Jess that he can speak to his dad, but only at night, through a special pair of sunglasses. He told her he can use them to “see into space” and, if he presses a button, he can “see Daddy and this one lets me hear him talk”.
Read more: Jess Irwin admits husband Jonnie’s dying moments ‘weren’t peaceful’
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