Rob Ford’s grieving mother says the late mayor was the “kindest, most easygoing person you could imagine” and will reside in her heart forever.
Diane Ford made the comment to CP24 during an exclusive interview at her north Etobicoke home late on Wednesday afternoon.
The interview occurred hours after thousands of people lined the streets to pay their final respects to Ford as his casket was taken from city hall to St. James Cathedral for his funeral.
“What you saw was what you got with Rob and I loved him for it,” the Ford family matriarch said. “He’ll be in my heart forever. I miss him.”
Ford, 46, passed away last week following a battle with an aggressive form of soft tissue cancer.
Reflecting on her youngest son’s final days on this earth, Diane Ford said she knew in her heart that he wouldn’t make it but tried to stay strong for his sake.
“I would cry all the way to the hospital but as soon as I got there I would be fine because I was helping,” she said. “I would massage his feet, I would get cream for him, just the special things that a mother always does. I would take his clothes home at night and wash them so they would be nice and clean. It was heartbreaking.”
Ford told CP24 that her “heart is broken in a million pieces” following her son’s death but she said that she is taking some strength from the enormous outpouring of support from Torontonians who loved Rob.
Ford said that support really illustrates for her how much Ford was able to accomplish with the time that he had.
“He worked so hard for the people. He just wanted to help people,” she said, telling a story about one time when she personally observed Ford return 25 constituent phone calls while returning from a wedding in Burlington late one night. “I couldn’t even spend the day with him because everyone would come see him. They would come to the door, come to our backyard.”
A loving father
Though Rob Ford was known to most Torontonians for his time in the mayor’s office, Diane Ford said she hopes he will also be remembered for who he was away from city hall, a loving father to an eight year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter.
Beyond Rob Ford the politician or Rob Ford the family man, though, Diane Ford said a part of her will always remember the younger Rob Ford that she would drag shopping because she couldn’t stand the thought of leaving him with someone else.
“We called him scoop because he wanted to know everything,” she said. “He asked me questions constantly always asking, asking and asking.”
Diane Ford told CP24 that Rob's death has been hard on her whole family, but especially his widow Renata.
"She doesn’t know how she’s going to go on without him," she said.
'He stood by me through some of my hardest times,' nephew says
Speaking with CP24 following Diane Ford's interview, Michael Ford said he slept in Mount Sinai Hospital for five days at his uncle’s bedside.
“He stood by me through some of the hardest times in my life, and that was the hardest time in his life, so I wanted to be there if he needed it,” Michael Ford said.
Michael, who was elected as a Toronto District School Board trustee in Oct. 2014, said his uncle taught him “a lot of important principles in my life, serving the public and politics.”
He said Rob Ford’s children Dougie and Stephanie should remember his immense love for them, but also “his passion for serving people, and for helping people.”
