Jane McDonald has opened up about her grief following the death of her partner Eddie Rothe.
The Searchers musician died last year after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
Appearing on Kaye Adams’ How To Be 60 podcast, Jane spoke of how it had taken “a bit of adjusting” to the idea she is going to have “a different life” now that Ed is no longer here.
“I’m a lot better than when I was on Loose Women,” she said referring to a tearful appearance she made on the show in November where she publicly spoke of Ed’s death for the first time.
“I can talk about him now and just feel great that I had that amazing time with him,” she said (via The Mirror).
“And it’s funny, we should talk about retiring because he retired at 59. And said, I promise you when you get to this age, you’ll see a difference. And I have. So we had lots of plans.
“And I think that’s part of grief as well is that you go through the normal grief and the terrible, terrible time and then you grieve the life that you thought you were going to have.”
Jane – who is known for being part of the Loose Women panel on-and-off between 2004 and 2014 as well as her Channel 5 travel shows – continued: “When he died, he took our future. So I think that is, I’ve got to have a different life now. And that’s taken a bit of adjusting to, but I’ll get there. Because that’s what do, we get there.”
Eddie and Jane first dated for a few months back in the early 80s when he was the drummer in disco group Liquid Gold.
They became a couple again 26 years later when they were brought back into each other’s lives following a chance meeting at the ITV studios in 2008, where Jane was filming Loose Women and Ed was appearing on This Morning.
The pair became engaged later that year.
Elsewhere during the podcast, Jane also discussed finding out about Eddie’s diagnosis.
She said: “It’s a shock when your partner becomes ill. And it’s just a shock to your system completely. And I think it’s made me realise actually, how many summers have we got left.
“And I want to do so much. I want to go on holiday, instead of filming one. I want to you know, I want to write, I want to be creative. I want to have time in my lovely home.
“You know, and I want to be here for my family. You know, my, my niece is just about to have a baby. And we’re all very excited about that.
“And I want to be around, I want to be around for them all just for a while to like sort myself out and then stop working as much as I do. Because I work constantly.”
The How To Be 60 podcast with Kaye Adams is available on podcast platforms.