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Four months after her husband Uche Ojeh's death, Sheinelle Jones made a heartfelt return to the Today show. The 47-year-old joined Savannah Guthrie for a taped sit-down, where she spoke openly about her loss for the first time.
"My heart is shattered in a million pieces," Jones said. "The life that I've known since I was 19 is no more. I've always wanted kids and I have three kids of my own now and they've lost their dad. And I'm their mom. It sucks."
Ojeh, who died in May at age 45 from brain cancer, had been Jones' partner for nearly two decades and together they shared three children.
Jones described her husband's fight against the disease as both heartbreaking and inspiring. "It's a beautiful nightmare," she explained. "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. But the way he fought it, and the way we rallied together, and the way we saw the best of humanity—that was beautiful."
During his illness, she continued to host Today while caring for him, often leaving the studio for his chemotherapy sessions. "I thought, 'I'm not faking it. My joy is real,'" she recalled. "I would do the show and then hop in the car and go be with him during chemo."
Though she had believed he would recover, Jones says the experience transformed her view of grief. "I don't run away from crying anymore when it comes to grief. I see it as, 'Okay, here comes my cleansing rain. And it's okay.'"
Returning to the show, Jones called her colleagues her "oxygen" and said, "If you see me laughing ... you root for me because I'm fighting for my joy." She added, "We can grieve but we can also still try to move forward. We don't move on, but we move forward with our loved ones."
