Sarah Parish and James Murray discuss loss of Ella-Jayne and their charity work

Sarah Parish and James Murray have spoken about the trauma of losing their daughter Ella-Jayne, who died in January 2009 at eight months old from Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome and a congenital heart defect. Ella-Jayne was born in May 2008, five weeks premature, underwent open-heart surgery at three days old, and spent four months in intensive care with her parents by her side. Parish, 57, and Murray, 50, describe living with the blind hope she would survive and say that during those months nothing else mattered.

It was January 2009 when Ella-Jayne died at home, and the loss cut them off at the knees. 'We were thrown into a nightmare,' Parish recalled, and Murray added that the pain was all-consuming. They were warned that about 75 per cent of couples split after losing a child, a statistic that underscored how close they came to the break. The couple has since said they found a way to hold each other up even as they navigated grief.

To cope, the pair left daily life and traveled to Vietnam and Cambodia to volunteer in orphanages that cared for seriously ill children. Parish said they surrounded themselves with other people’s pain to put their own grief into perspective, a move that helped them endure and shape their future together.

In 2014 they founded Imagine This, originally called Murray Parish Trust, to support the mental wellbeing of seriously ill children and their families across the United Kingdom. The charity’s work was formally recognized in the 2025 New Year Honours, when both Parish and Murray were awarded MBEs for services to children with an illness and their families. Parish called the honour one of the best days ever, noting that Ella-Jayne's brief life had made a lasting difference; Murray described it as a validation of their daughter’s influence on their lives.

The couple later welcomed daughter Nell, now 15, ten months after Ella-Jayne’s death. Parish says she still writes Ella-Jayne a birthday card each year and keeps it to read together on meaningful days. Murray described the anxiety that surrounded Sarah’s second pregnancy; Nell's birth was dramatic and filled with caution, but the family has since found resilience and balance between acting careers and their charity work.

James has described his own healing through fishing: the pain was unbearable, therapy did not help, and talking to friends did not help with something so hard to grasp. I stood in the river and began to cast; fishing became the way he coped and where he felt Ella-Jayne again.

The Parishes continue to balance their acting careers with their charity, Imagine This, which supports families affected by serious illness. For more information, imaginethis.org.uk.