HEARTBROKEN: Sheinelle Jones Opens Up About Finding ‘BEAUTY IN THE NIGHTMARE’ After Her Husband’s D3ATH
HEARTBROKEN: Sheinelle Jones Opens Up About Finding ‘BEAUTY IN THE NIGHTMARE’ After Her Husband’s D3ATH
Sheinelle Jones has described the loss of her husband of 17 years as a “beautiful nightmare.”
The co-host of the 3rd Hour of TODAY spoke to Savannah Guthrie on Sept. 5 in her first interview since Uche Ojeh d!ed in May at age 45 from brain cancer.
Sheinelle, 47, opened up about the feeling of losing the father of their three children and the man she loved since the two were students at Northwestern University.
“It’s a beautiful nightmare,” she said.
She recalled how, as students, she and Uche would sit quietly together, dreaming about the future in her dorm room at Northwestern as they looked out at a beautiful clock tower. She then flashed forward nearly 30 years to when they were in his hospital room together with a view of the New York City skyline.
“I remember staring out the window, and I’m like, oh, my God, it’s like this crazy, full-circle moment,” she said. “Here we are again, not talking, and it feels like a beautiful nightmare.”
“It felt scary. It felt divine. It felt bigger than us,” she continued. “But at the end of the day, when we shut the door and it was just us, that was always when we felt like we were at our best. And my 19-year-old self did it, and then my 47-year-old self was doing it again. We would just hold hands, and the nurses would come in, and they would call us the lovebirds. And we would just look at each other, say ‘I love you,’ and hold hands. But that’s what I mean by beautiful nightmare.”
The couple share son Kayin, 16, and 13-year-old twins Uche and Clara.
“I found beauty in the nightmare,” she went on to explain. “And trust me, it is a nightmare to watch a 45-year-old do two triathlons and live and breathe off of soccer and his kids…to take a guy like that and watch him have to deal with this fight was a nightmare.”
The couple leaned on their faith during Uche’s treatment, and Sheinelle says hers was tested to the fullest.
“There are times where I’m like, ‘God, I’ve been praying for this job since I was in fifth grade.’ Like, yellow construction paper. I did the helmet hair. Ms. James will tell you — I did little hoop earrings and a little box by my head in fifth grade. And you got me all the way here…and you take my husband. Are you kidding me?” she said. “Like, really?”
“There can’t be a God. No way a God would do that to somebody like Sheinelle. There’s no way, right? It would be very easy to think that,” she continued. “But you look at somebody like my husband — his faith is what kept him going.”
She shared that she continued working at TODAY for almost a year while facing Uche’s illness behind the scenes. She would often go right from her workday to be with her husband as he underwent chemotherapy treatments, while maintaining her sunny demeanor on the show.
“And I got to that place where I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, so when I decided to take a leave (from TODAY), that was why — because I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring,” she said.
“And I was starting to feel like I didn’t want to miss it,” she continued. “I didn’t want to look back. I wanted to be strong, and I wanted to look back and know that I was strong. But I didn’t want to be so strong that I missed this blessing right in front of me — that I missed the fight, that I missed the beauty in the fight. That I missed just looking in his eyes. Because I was his oxygen sometimes. I would just (whisper), ‘I love you. We’re going to be OK. I love you. Look at me. I’m here.’”
The couple would have celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary on Sept. 1.
“It just felt like we always kind of had it. And when he was dying, I would say, ‘This sucks, and this is scary, but if you ask me if this was going to be my fate, I would do it all over again,’” she said tearfully.
Sheinelle is now returning to TODAY after having taken leave in January to be with Uche and her children. She hopes that her return after such an emotionally wrenching loss can help others who may be going through a similar situation.
“We don’t move on, but we move forward with our loved ones,” she said. “I hope that just by me being on the set and me returning to work, it’s like, ‘OK, if I can do it, so can you, right?’
“So don’t get me wrong, my heart still hurts,” she continued. “So if you see me now and you see me laughing, or you turn on the morning show and I’m laughing or having a good time, you root for me…because I’m fighting for my joy.”
