Rio Ferdinand: I told my kids their mum was 'going up to the stars'

Raising kids alone: Rio Ferdinand with his three children Lorenz, Tate and Tia
Instagram/ Rio Ferdinand
Eleanor Rose24 September 2017

Rio Ferdinand has told of the heartbreaking moment he told his three kids their mum was "going to go up into the stars" before he lost his wife to cancer.

The former footballer's wife Rebecca Ellison died in 2015 aged just 34 after being diagnosed with breast cancer for a second time.

In a new book, Thinking Out Loud - Love, Grief And Being Mum And Dad, 38-year-old Ferdinand writes of the shock and grief of his three children - Lorenz, 11, Tate, nine, and six-year-old Tia - as he told them their mother would die.

"I gazed at my beautiful children, lost for words, searching for a way to begin," Ferdinand writes in the book, which is serialised in The Sun newspaper.

Happier days: Ferdinand with wife Rebecca Ellison
PA

"'I'm afraid I've got to tell you something very, very sad. Mum's not going to be able to get out of here. She's got cancer again and this time she isn't going to get better'.

"They stared at me, wide-eyed, dumbstruck.

"'They've been trying to help her, the doctors, but they can't any more. She's been strong, and she's tried to get better, but I'm so sorry. She's going to be a star - she's going to go up into the stars as a spirit, and she'll always be there in the sky, looking down on us and..."'

Ferdinand continues: "I couldn't go on. Tears were streaming down the children's faces; they were sobbing, crying out. 'Why? Why? Why?' Tate kept wailing, over and over. 'What are you talking about?'

"I tried to explain again, but we were beyond words by then; engulfed in a firestorm of pain. Even now, the memory of that scene is enough to plunge me back into a darkness I never want to see again."

Ms Ellison was first diagnosed in 2014 and, after treatment, appeared free from the disease.

But it returned a year later, this time in her bones. She died on May 1, just five weeks later.

Rio Ferdinand wipes his eyes as he is filmed for BBC documentary Being Mum and Dad
BBC

Ferdinand, who won praise this year for his brave BBC documentary Being Mum and Dad about raising his kids alone while he grieved, says he held as they "broke down and sobbed".

"All I could think was, 'F*****g hell, could someone please help me?' "

The star said that he thought his wife clung on in her final days to see their daughter Tia turn four.

"By then her liver was failing and her limbs were swelling, her body was covered with bruises and she was suffering explosive nosebleeds," he writes.

"When the time came for the cake, Rebecca lifted Tia so she could blow out her candles.

Rio Ferdinand and Rebecca Ellison in BBC documentary Being Mum and Dad
BBC

"I think she had held on to life so she could see Tia turn four. It was the last time the children saw her fully conscious and alert."

In the autobiography, the former Man United and England captain also tells of how he spent the final hours of his wife's life with her in hospital, along with her family, and slept in her bed.

Ferdinand writes: "To some this may sound strange, possibly even macabre, but to me it felt only natural."

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