Inside Tom Parker’s Emotional Journey With The Wanted

Sadly, the life that offered him experiences he described as “beyond my wildest dreams” has ended. Parker died March 30, roughly 15 months after revealing he’d been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. He was 33.

Only two days ago, he posted a photo of The Wanted all together, captioned, “Dream Team.”

Still undergoing treatment in Spain, Parker was unable to join Max George, Siva Kaneswaran, Jay McGuiness and Nathan Sykes when they kicked off their much-anticipated March U.K. tour, the lasting image of only four onstage not what they had planned. In Bournemouth on March 7, Sykes acknowledged the “massive space” created by his absence. “We love Tom as much as you do,” he said. “In fact we’ll be big-headed and say that we love him slightly more, which is a lot. We can’t wait to have him back which will be very soon. He sees all your messages and everything.”

So when Parker turned up toward the end of the show, sitting in an elegant chair, fans were ecstatic. He stayed on the road, going to Wales, Nottingham and more, unable to go through more than a couple of songs a night, but obviously glad he came.

“Thank you to every single one of you who came to see us this past couple of weeks, we have had so much fun and made some more magical memories,” the group posted March 18 after their final show in Liverpool. “This man was a legend, a legend of his time @tomparkerofficial.”

Sharing the news of his condition in October 2020, Parker allowed that he was “absolutely devastated” by the diagnosis, but vowed to fight for his life. He had married his longtime sweetheart, Kelsey Hardwick, in 2018, the couple having weathered any bumps in the road caused by Parker’s boyband fame. They had also just welcomed a daughter, Aurelia Rose Parker, in June 2019, and son Bodhi Thomas Parker arrived barely two weeks after the couple opened up about Parker’s health crisis.