Jane McDonald was visibly moved during her appearance on Loose Women as she spoke of the profound pain following the loss of her loved ones.
Tragedy has sadly been a companion to Jane, who lost her father in 1993 and later her mother in December 2018. The sorrow continued when her longtime love, Eddie Rothe, passed away in 2021 at age 67.
Sharing her heartache on Loose Women, Jane expressed a poignant yearning: “If I could get my mother and Ed back, I would in a heartbeat. But I can’t. You’ve got to realise that life goes on and I want to live. I love life. We don’t know how many days we’ve got and Ed died very young. I want to just do everything I want to do. I’m moving forward and taking them with me.”
Jane found some solace during lockdown, as it allowed her to be by Eddie’s side in his final days. “As daft as it sounds, I’m thankful it was during Covid because I was there with him. Nobody else was. But that was the hardest thing. I had no nurses or doctors come in. I had to learn how to do it all myself. I had him at home as long as I could. Then I took him to the Wakefield Hospice, which is a beautiful place. I’ll be forever grateful to them. I was with him all the time there,” Jane shared.
Amidst her grief, Jane revealed last year that she holds no trepidation about the prospect of finding new love after the passing of her partner, reports the Mirror.
Addressing her single status, Jane added: “I’m not bothered. I’m really not. I don’t feel like I need someone in my life to make it fulfilled. We have a coping mechanism. I have a great group of girlfriends now, who are all in the same situation, we have a great time, we go out, we have dinner, drinks, parties round each others’ houses.
“We’re all in the same boat and it’s lovely to know that there’s someone there that you can call at three o’clock in the morning and say, ‘I’m having a bad day.’ I don’t feel like I need anyone.”
Reflecting on past relationships, she continued: “I’m grateful for what I had. I’ve turned it round in my head and I am so grateful that I had those wonderful years and I think grateful sort of cancels out everything else. I think back now with such joy and such love and that’s how I progress now.”
While acknowledging the challenges, she confessed: “It’s a journey. All the things you thought you were going to do, but you have to make a new life. It’s like starting again and that’s frightening for anyone. But we all find our way.”