Nina Nannar, the Arts Editor for ITV News, recently shared the emotional journey she undertook to New Zealand to lay her late husband, Steve Ronson, to rest. The trip was described as “agonizing” by Nina, as she scattered his ashes in a place that held deep significance for both of them.
Steve, a garden designer and Nina’s partner for 23 years, passed away in 2022 due to complications from kidney disease. Together, they have a 19-year-old daughter named Mimi. The couple had long planned to return Steve’s ashes to his homeland of New Zealand, where he spent his early years surfing and forming lifelong friendships.
In an interview with Norfolk magazine, Nina, aged 57, opened up about the emotional turmoil she faced in anticipation of this journey. For over a year, she had been both planning and dreading the trip, which she described as a “heartbreaking mission.” Despite their original intentions to make the trip the previous year, Nina confessed she was not yet prepared emotionally, fearing her grief might overwhelm her in the presence of Steve’s friends.
“Even though Steve has been gone three years, the sorrow I feel over his loss still manages to cripple me in unexpected moments,” Nina revealed, expressing the enduring pain and disbelief she experiences over his absence.
They had planned to do it the year before but she realised she wasn’t emotionally ready yet and Nina admitted she had sleepless nights over whether she might struggle to control her grief and ‘be embarrassing’ in front of his friends.
ITV News Arts Editor Nina Nannar has detailed her ‘agonising’ trip to New Zealand to scatter her late husband Steve’s ashes after losing him to kidney disease in 2022
The broadcaster lost her beloved garden designer husband of 23 years following complications from kidney disease – They have a daughter together called Mimi, 19, (centre)
Nina, (pictured on ITV News) said: ‘Even though Steve has been gone three years, the sorrow I feel over his loss still manages to cripple me in unexpected moments, of leaving me still in despair and disbelief that he is no longer here.’
Nina told the publication: ‘Even though Steve has been gone three years, the sorrow I feel over his loss still manages to cripple me in unexpected moments, of leaving me still in despair and disbelief that he is no longer here.’
Praising her friends for holding her hand ‘through my irrational moments’ and ‘times of agony’ she said: ‘My grief is raw, but this trip Mimi and I made did help us in a huge way.’
After getting to their destination, Nina and Mimi gathered Steve’s friends on his favourite surf beach and sang their ‘family anthem’, Return Of The Grievous Angel.
They also visited Steve’s paradise, a beach on the Coramandel Peninsula, where Nina filmed a video and sent it to his sister, Chris, who asked her if she had noticed an orb of green light floating across the video which Nina hopes is a sign from Steve.
Kidney Research UK wrote that Steve was born with reflux, a problem with a valve in the ureter that allows urine to travel the wrong way, from the bladder back into the kidney.
Nina and Steve’s friends went to his favourite beach on the Coramandel Peninsula, where she filmed a video and sent it to his sister, Chris, who asked her if she had noticed an orb of green light floating across the video. Nina hopes is a sign from Steve, (pictured).
When he was a teenager, he collapsed because his kidney was barely functioning and had to begin dialysis treatment immediately.
He spent three and a half years on dialysis, before receiving a kidney transplant which lasted for 30 years.
Then in 2016, Steve went back onto dialysis for nearly two years before getting a second transplant.
Sadly, a side effect of the anti-rejection medication Steve had to take every day is an increased risk skin cancer and he was monitored for this every year.
In 2021, he had surgery to remove some lump on his back which had changed and doctors discovered there were cancer cells.
A year later, the cancer cells had spread, and Steve’s ear had to be removed the day after his 60th birthday.
Sadly, Steve passed away and Nina and their daughter were with him when he died, playing his favourite songs during his final moments.
