Suzie Fletcher (centre) says her Repair Shop ‘family’ helped her heal (Image: BBC / Ricochet / Cody Burridge)
Repair Shop fan-favourite Suzie Fletcher has shared the heart-rending moment she realised her husband Rob had given up his fight against . Rob, who was gravely ill with and had become almost “skeletal”, was on a motorcycling holiday with when he began to struggle with manoeuvring his ride into a bike rack.
Before star could assist him, other bikers rushed over to lend a hand. Rob, who was wearing multiple t-shirts to conceal his frailty, accepted their help, telling them “Look, man, I got cancer.”
In her poignant memoir, The Sun Over The Mountains, Suzie wrote: “I saw the humiliation in his face,” but also noted an acceptance.
Suzie Fletcher revealed her late husband’s acceptance (Image: BBC/Ricochet/Guy Levy)
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She continued: “From that moment, I started to see a different look on his face. I’ve seen the same thing in other people who are terminally ill. You see it in their eyes and you can trace it along their brow. It registered with me that this was a new beginning for Rob. An acceptance.”
She added: “Until then he’d been fighting hard, but now he had crossed over that indiscernible line that divides living and letting go,” reports .
Suzie, originally from Oxford, had relocated to the US to work as a master saddler in the state of Illinois. Initially planning to stay for two years, she ended up residing there for 22 years after meeting Rob in Colorado just three weeks after her arrival.
Suzie says that throwing herself into work was therapeutic (Image: BBC)
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Suzie fondly remembers the day she took the leap to propose to her late husband Rob: “Some memories are more lucid than others, the one of me bending down on my knee to propose to Rob on the sidewalk in [South Dakota tourism hotspot] Custer is crystal clear.”
She recounted the mix of emotions at the time, saying: “By the time he put the ring on me, he was in tears. We were happy but there was sad, unsaid recognition on both sides.”
Suzie described a poignant acceptance that both she and Rob shared: “He couldn’t verbalise it but it was clear he’d given up the fight and was surrendering to the love we shared in whatever time we had left together.”
Suzie says she spotted the moment her husband ‘accepted’ the end (Image: BBC/Ricochet Ltd/Steve Peskett)
The tragic loss of Rob led Susie back to UK soil where, with encouragement from her brother Steve, she joined The Repair Shop’s talented team. This stint on television, according to Susie has been therapeutic, as she reflected in her words: “Being part of The Repair Shop has healed me from the inside.
Using my skills in such a positive way has brought me joy and confidence. If I’ve ever been worried or run into a problem, their very first words have been ‘What can we do to help? What do you need? ‘ This changes the dynamics of everything.”
One viewers can look forward to more heartfelt restorations on The Repair Shop, scheduled to air tomorrow (Tuesday, December 24) at 8.15pm.