Dame Esther Rantzen shares heartbreaking final wish as she reveals she has 'extremely limited' time left
9 April 2025, 13:00 | Updated: 9 April 2025, 13:07
Dame Esther Rantzen has revealed her final wish as she issued a heartbreaking cancer health update.
Listen to this article
Loading audio...
Dame Esther revealed that she had joined Dignitas at the end of 2023 after being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
The Childline founder was told at one point that she had only weeks to live and worried that she would not see Christmas that year.
Speaking in a new interview, she said her final wish was to reunite with her late husband, Desmond Wilcox, who died in 2000 aged 69.
Read more: Esther Rantzen ‘delighted’ at result of assisted dying vote, her daughter tells LBC
"If there is a heaven, it would be a very happy place," she told the Times.
"It's a lovely idea to meet Desmond again and all those I have loved and lost — my parents and grandparents, my close friends and family."
She also said she was aware her time was "extremely limited" so she enjoys each day as it comes.
"I want the ones I love to have good memories of our life together. Not terrible memories of the way I die," Dame Esther said.
Speaking in 2013, she said she would happily sacrifice years of her own life for more time with her husband.
"Desmond’s last words to me were, 'I adore you'. I was sitting on his deathbed," she said.
"I will take those words with me to the grave.
"I said to my son last night, 'If God gave me the choice between ten more years of life and ten more minutes with Desi, I would pick those ten minutes.'"
Dame Esther Rantzen hails Labour's 'extraordinary' Kim Leadbeater for the assisted dying bill
It comes after her daughter, Rebecca Wilcox, said a cancer drug she was put on last year was no longer working.
She had previously hailed the "amazing" new drug which was delaying the spread of her cancer.
Asked whether her mother was seeing "improvement", Ms Wilcox told 5 News: "I really wish that was true but I don’t think that’s the case anymore."
Dame Esther's relationship with her husband began in 1968.
They married in 1977 and spent 30 years together before his death.
