Janet Ellis 'doesn't believe' she will see her late husband again
Janet Ellis is a "humanist", therefore, she does not think she will see her late husband, John Leach, in heaven.
Janet Ellis does not think she will be reunited with her late husband in heaven.
The former Blue Peter presenter - who is a "humanist" - shared 32 years of married life with producer-and-director John Leach until his death from lung cancer in July 2020, four years after his initial cancer diagnosis.
And although she "doesn't believe I'm going to see him again", Janet - who previously declared grief as "absolutely exhausting" - feels "completely comforted by the life we shared together".
She added in her column for the new issue of Woman's Weekly magazine: "John's absence is still extraordinary to me.
"He is still my husband, I still love him, and he's always in my head and my heart."
Meanwhile, Janet - who married John in the South of France in 1988, two years after they were introduced in 1986 - would love it if people remembered her for hosting Blue Peter in the mid-1980s after she dies.
The 70-year-old star - who met John a couple of years after she divorced Robin Bextor in 1984 - said: "When all's said and done, if when people see me, they only think of sticky-back plastic, tinsel Advent crowns made from coat hangers, and dogs and gardens, then that's lovely.
"Blue Peter was a privilege, and I never tire of being reminded about it."
In 2016, John had suffered from a persistent sore throat, and his GP referred him for a biopsy, which showed he had cancer of the tonsils.
Janet told the Telegraph in 2021 that the diagnosis came as a "massive shock", and added: "The oncologist said he had an excellent chance of recovery, but the treatment was hard – he had a tonsillectomy and daily radiotherapy.
"He coped stoically, and the following April he had a scan that was all clear."
In April 2017, he had a scan "that was all clear"; however, by November that year, John and Janet were told by the oncologist that he was "not clear", and after a biopsy in the lung, they were told he had secondary cancer.
Recalling the moment they received the heartbreaking news, Janet said: "I remembered doing this weird howling, like a keening, when I heard.
"They said it wasn’t curable but it was treatable. We never talked about him dying. John was an amazing man, and he lived in the present, and if I ever started to say something, he would shut it down.
"We both knew that we weren’t going to be silver-haired people together, but we didn’t talk about when."
In spring 2020 - during the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic - John's treatment for cancer stopped because it was too dangerous for him to go to hospital.
And in July that year, John - the dad of her two younger children, son Jackson, 39, and 35-year-old daughter Martha - was admitted to hospital, and Janet knew he did not have long left when doctors started to stop giving him drugs.
Recalling the day before he died, Janet - who also has a daughter, singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, 46, with her ex-husband, Robin - said: "The whole family spent the day before he died with him.
"And because music was so important to him, we set up decent speakers and played his favourites and talked.
"Some of it was funny, and some of it was sad, and when they left, I stayed through the night."
