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THE PANELLIST SHARED HOW THEY DECIDED TO PROTECT HER DAUGHTER'S CHILDREN FROM LEARNING ABOUT HER TERMINAL ILLNESS 13:50, 02 Jun 2025 Loose Women star Gloria Hunniford opened up about
the death of her daughter as she said "there's no blueprint" in how to approach children on the topic of terminal illness. During Monday's (2nd June) instalment, Coleen
Nolan was head of the daytime show panel and joined in the studio by Sue Cleaver, Jane Moore and Gloria Hunniford. Coleen kickstarted the conversation by sharing a clip from Tom Daley's
new documentary that discusses how he felt losing his dad at 16-years-old, where he wasn't told that he had a terminal illness. In the clip, Tom can be heard saying: "I remember
walking into the hospital and seeing him (his dad) in the hospital bed with bandages wrapped around his head. That was when I found out that he had just had a brain tumour the size of a
grapefruit removed. "I wasn't told that it was terminal, so I always assumed and had the hopeful optimism that he was going to recover, because you think of your parents as
invincible." Article continues below They then panned back to the studio, and Gloria Hunniford shared her own experience with the death of her daughter, Caron Keating. She said: "I
lost Caron, my daughter, and she had breast cancer. The children, when she was diagnosed, would have been very young. I should say, first of all, that when she went to see a doctor she
would say 'do not give me a prognosis, I don't want to know anything'. "At one point, one of my sons and myself were given a year and a half prognosis because her cancer
had gone very sharply differently.... Caron lived for seven years and it was her positivity and tenacity that allowed her to live that length of time. By the time, she was now living in
Australia with her children and her husband. "There was a thought amongst the family that the children should be told exactly what it was, and you know, some people may disagree with
it.... I thought let children be children, and knowing now that Caron lived for seven years, I believe it was the right decision because they were allowed to have their childhood."
Gloria continued: "There is no blueprint for it, it depends how the family things, what age the children are, and I'm looking forward to seeing his documentary and to learn a
little more." Coleen then added: "When my dad passed away, and the boys were quite young then. Shane Jr. absolutely didn't want to go to the funeral. He just didn't,
whereas Jake absolutely did. Article continues below "I think you have to judge it on each individual child and how they're going to handle it. You know, we protected Ciara from
going to Auntie Bernie's funeral because she was on a school holiday and having the best time, it was like, she doesn't need to be surrounded by all of us crying. "But now, at
23, she said to me 'I feel like i never got to say goodbye', so it was actually kind of the wrong decision even though we thought we were making the right one." LOOSE WOMEN
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