Red Symons reflects on the death of his son Samuel who died from brain cancer at the age of 27

Hey, Hey It’s Saturday star Red Symons has spoken about his journey of grief after losing his 27-year-old son Samuel to brain cancer three years ago.

Symons’ son Thomas tragically passed away on October 2018 after being diagnosed with glioblastoma a year earlier.  

‘Well, simply put, you don’t get over it,’ the 72-year-old said on the Baby Boomers Guide to Life in the 21st Century podcast. ‘You take it on board. It becomes part of your view of the world.’

Hey, Hey It’s Saturday star Red Symons has spoken about his journey of grief after losing his 27-year-old son Samuel to brain cancer three years ago. Pictured: With son Samuel (right) and youngest son Joel

Symons then recalled visiting his son’s grave on his birthday in late June. 

‘I took with me something I’d seen…an idea I’d come across is you take a stone, a pebble, and you leave it at the grave site in order to somehow communicate, ‘Yes, my son, I’ve been here. Here, I’m leaving this memory of us here,” he said. 

‘I was born in Brighton in England, which has a beach covered in pebbles, and I retrieved in relatively recent times a pebble from that beach. It’s red and kidney-shaped, and I thought, ‘I will leave that at Samuel’s grave.”

‘Well, simply put, you don’t get over it,’ the 72-year-old said on the Baby Boomers Guide to Life in the 21st Century podcast. ‘You take it on board. It becomes part of your view of the world’ 

The TV personality detailed how he coincidentally bumped into his other son, Raphael, at the site and the emotional moment they shared together.

‘When I arrived, who should be sitting there but Raphael, Samuel’s brother, my son, just sitting on his haunches, contemplating his brother, and his loss. We embraced, and I was immediately overwhelmed by sob – my sobs,’ Symons continued. 

‘As somebody who’s interested in psychoanalysis, I have asked myself this before. ‘Is that feeling always in there?’ he questioned. 

Symons told the podcast hosts how ‘nice’ it’s been to be ‘overwhelmed by grief’ at times when men have traditionally been taught ‘not to express things’.  

He described the feeling of grief as somewhat cathartic as it has allowed him to ‘let go’.

‘It’s expressing from whatever part of your brain that grief, and you feel spent, freed of it, afterwards,’ he added.  

Tragic: Symons’ son Thomas passed away on October 2018 after being diagnosed with glioblastoma a year earlier