Leah Bracknell’s widower watches old episodes of ‘Emmerdale’ starring her to help him "connect to her spirit".
Jez Hughes has started to view Leah’s performances as Zoe Tate in the ITV soap to help him remember his late wife who passed away aged 55 in September 2019 following a three-year battle with stage four lung cancer.
Speaking during an appearance on ‘Loose Women’ on Tuesday (22.09.20), Jez said: "It helps me connect to her spirit, it was before I knew her but I knew how special it was for her. If there’s an emotional scene I know those emotions and it hits me there."
Leah starred in ‘Emmerdale’ between 1989 and 2005. She married Jez in 2017.
Jez admits that his grief has been unbearable at times since her passing, comparing the emotion to a "monster who comes into your house" … and brings "friends like fear and anger and pain and sorrow".
He shared: "Grief is like a monster or a person who comes into your house and after the first day they’re in your house the whole time and they bring friends like fear and anger and pain and sorrow.
"It’s like being assaulted every single day."
Jez also admitted that it had he had felt a sense of "guilt" for moving on with his life after Leah – whose real name was Alison Rosalind Bracknell – passed away.
He said: "Living life again brings things like guilt. Grief can hit you suddenly and in some ways that’s harder.
"I think grief is about finding beauty. Life can be very cruel … it’s about trying to find the beauty in that and that’s what Ali did with the whole facing cancer.
"She didn’t want to be defined by her diagnosis. She never moaned about the cancer, she never said ‘why is it me?’"