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A grieving Sheffield man says he hopes to honor his wife’s dying wish by raising money for St Luke’s Hospice following her death from cancer aged 40.

Rob Turner’s ‘brave’ wife Lesley died on July 22 last year, and in November 2021 she was diagnosed with a rare cancer angiosarcoma. After finding a lump in her breast, Lesley and Rob were told the condition was ‘incurable’.

During several trips to Sheffield’s Northern General and Weston Park hospitals, the couple realized that cancer was so rare that some of the nurses had never even heard of it. Rob said: “We knew pretty quickly that he was serious. Lesley though,” he just smiled and said, ‘I’m still here.'”

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The mother-of-one asked doctors not to tell her how much time she had left. Rob, 41, said: “He had chemotherapy for about four months, but he always had a smile on his face and said ‘if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry’, so we tried to keep going.”

Lesley, a mother of one, spent the last five days of her life at St Luke’s and made Rob “promise” that if he raised funds, it would be for St Luke’s. Speaking about the hospice, Rob said: “They took such good care, not just of Lesley but all the visitors, including me. They gave me a bed, they fed me and they gave me water, they took such good care of everyone.”

Rob and Lesley, who had a son together, eight-year-old Liam, met in Glasgow, Scotland in 2007. Rob was outfitting a store in Iceland where Lesley, originally from Stranraer, was the store manager, and the couple began to hit it off.

After finishing the job and before returning to Sheffield, the lovesick Rob left his future wife an Easter egg with a note attached reading “Hope to see you seen”. He said: “We started texting and for a good year we visited each other up and down. After a year we said we’d give it a try.”

“I said I’d move to Glasgow, but Lesley said she wouldn’t last five minutes, so she moved here to Sheffield.” The couple then bought their first home together and were married on June 14, 2014 at Stannington Church. Describing Lesley, Rob said, “She was kind. She only found the funny side of things, she was just fun and brilliant to be around.”

“She was a genuine person, not a fake. And she always let you know how she felt.”

Speaking about his son Liam, Rob said: “It’s been hard for him but he has a lot of friends at school who help him and a loving family around him, but with Mother’s Day approaching and card making at school he’s feeling it a little more.” getting over it with my help and with the help of his grandparents.”

Rob, keeping his promise to Lesley, has raised almost £4,500 with a GoFundMe campaign, surpassing his original goal of £3,500. He has also organized a golf tournament at Hillsborough Golf Club on May 12.

Having sold all 100 tickets for £50 each, Rob hopes to raise £10,000 in total for St Luke’s.

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