She has modestly said it ‘snowballed’
Actress Sarah Parish and her husband Jamie Murray have shared two children together. But tragically they lost their first daughter, Ella-Jayne, when she was just eight months old in January 2009.
Ella-Jayne was born with a serious heart defect – Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome, which caused a large hole in her heart and a defective heart valve – and spent the first four months of life in intensive care.
Sarah, 57, and Jamie became parents to second daughter Nell later in the year they lost Ella-Jayne.
But the Stay Close star and The Crown actor have kept Ella-Jayne’s memory alive with stunning fundraising efforts for the medical department that cared for their daughter during her brief life.
Back in 2016, Sarah – who appears as a guest on Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh this weekend (March 22) – opened up about her family’s grief.
Sarah Parish on dealing with her grief
The couple decided to thank medics and those who supported them through such a difficult time by raising money for the paediatric intensive care unit at Southampton hospital.
Sarah told The Guardian at the time: “Grief is a personal thing. Jim and I knew we had to deal with Ella-Jayne’s death in our own way. So we went to Cambodia to work in an orphanage for a couple of months, and then we set up a charity, the Murray Parish Trust.”
How fundraising efforts began
Back in 2022, Sarah Parish and husband Jamie explained during an appearance on This Morning how their fundraising efforts began.
Sarah said: “When Ella-Jayne passed, we felt we couldn’t walk away from the hospital without giving something back to the surgeons and doctors and nurses and all the incredible people that helped us and her so much.
“And so we started doing a couple of sponsored walks, and a cake bake sale… and then 10 years later we’ve turned into a full-time charity.”
Reflecting on how the charity has helped raised 0ver £5 million, Sarah smiled modestly: “It has snowballed, somewhat.”
Ella’s death almost destroyed Sarah’s marriage
Writing in the Mail back in 2017, Sarah also revealed how the couple’s grief following the death of their daughter almost destroyed their marriage.
She wrote: “Such an incredible loss inevitably puts an enormous strain on a relationship because people grieve in different ways. It would take the most emotionally mature people to be able to cope in that situation, and to comfort one another in the correct way. We have made mistakes and done things that don’t work for each other – and you either end up together, or you don’t.”
Sarah added: “The day she died she took a bottle for the first time; she held our gaze and smiled into our eyes. For Jim and I, it was very, very difficult. It left a huge hole in our lives. I now know that losing a child is the hardest thing to happen to anyone; that we had never experienced tragedy before she died. We had never truly understood grief or loss.
“I had support from my friends. But at home, Jim and I did things that didn’t work for each other. The pressure of grief is such that either you end up separating or, miraculously, you don’t. Jim and I have remained together despite some terrible, terrible times.”