James Tobin can finally talk about losing his mum to breast cancer

It’s been four years since his mother, Christa, died from breast cancer and James Tobin can only now talk about the disease that took her and how his life would never be the same.

It’s been four years since James Tobin lost his mum Christa – a loss so significant, the Seven personality is only now able to talk about it. Just.

His mum – who earned her name because she was born on Christmas Eve – died at the age of 68 of breast cancer, the insidious disease she’d beaten just 10 years earlier.

“I’ve never really spoken publicly about Mum’s death,” the Weekend Sunrise weather presenter tells Insider.

“And I think the reason for that is it takes a long time to process. I think anyone who’s gone through the death of someone close to them knows a little bit about what that experience is.

“The reality is no two experiences are the same, but I think anyone who’s lost a parent knows that it’s something that changes you, and means that life will never be the same again.

“It is a part of life – but it’s a part of life that’s really hard and it changes you as a person forever.”

Christa and James Tobin.

Despite being overcome with emotion, Tobin is now ready to talk. His mum was the woman who talked to people too. She knew everyone, wore red lipstick and bright colours, and was the life of the party. She tried new things – taking ballet lessons in her last year on earth was a joy – and her horse, Fancy, helped her through the trauma of her sickness. Her legacy is one of family – and her proud son wants to use that to not only raise awareness for breast cancer research, but also to remember her, for his own healing too.

“You knew if my mum was in the room – she had an energy and a presence,” he says.

Christa taking ballet lessons.

Christa with her horse, Fancy, and granddaughter Eddison.

“She always made an effort to get to know people. All of my friends considered my mum one of their friends.

“She took the time to find out what was happening in people’s lives – the postman, and Russell who used to paint our house, and the builder who built our house. All of these people remain family friends, because she had that care and that interest.

“She was never one to hold back her opinion – whether she agreed or she disagreed – and she had this rare ability to completely disagree with you and fight you on a topic, but then you’d walk away great mates.”

In fact it was that curiosity in people and ability to communicate that inspired his own career path, the 43-year-old says.

“I’d love to say that I have inherited some of those traits and characteristics – if I have some small percentage of what she had then I will be very happy and proud to say that I have.”

TV personality James Tobin at the SCG, where he will help support the Jane McGrath Day during the summer cricket test series. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Tobin will MC the McGrath Foundation’s High Tea on Jane McGrath Day, on day three of the Pink Test in January, an event he’s long supported. When he was asked by organisers about doing interviews about his involvement, he admits that saying yes was daunting.

“They said it’s likely that people will ask about your mum, how do you feel about that? And I’ve thought about that a lot,” he says.

“I spoke to my dad and I spoke to my brother and sister, and I think for me, four years on, I’m at a point now where I can talk about it – with difficulty – but I think part of it for me is that speaking about someone keeps them alive in people’s memories, and it also honours the person that they were and what they brought to this world, and that goes on beyond their physical time on this earth.

“So I think the joyous part of talking is that I can remember Mum and the huge impact that she had on everyone she met – because she was vivacious, she was colourful, she was passionate, she was loving and she was caring. She was someone who left a big impression on people.”

Over a decade before she died, she had breast cancer, but received treatment and recovered.

James Tobin said his mum, Christa, “was vivacious, she was colourful, she was passionate, she was loving and she was caring. She was someone who left a big impression on people.”

“The scans revealed that she was cancer free – but that wasn’t a slow and easy process. It was a hard process, and a long process,” Tobin says.

“But eventually she got to the point where she was cancer free – and she was for 10 years.

“And breast cancer is so insidious, that just a tiny, tiny, tiny little bit of it was still in her body – so small it was undetectable to the test, so the same cancer came back.

“We were lucky that we managed to find the same medical team that had dealt with it the first time and they were amazing, but sadly, it had got too strong a grip.

“Every person who goes through cancer is going to react differently. and everyone who goes through cancer is going to have different needs and wants and fears and questions – but for my mum, she was someone who very much wanted to protect her family from what she was going through.

“So although her and dad were at the core of it, she largely tried to shelter me and my brother and sister from a really awful part of it, to protect her children.

“So it doesn’t matter who you are, support is such a big part of it, and I think that’s what the McGrath Foundation and their breast care nurses offer – because I know the support that my mum had with her medical team was so important.

James Tobin with parents Tony and Christa.

“At home she could talk to dad, she could talk to us, but she wanted to protect us – but with the medical team – she could have really robust and to the point conversations with them, and they provided so much support.

“That’s the ethos of what these breast care nurses provide.

“It’s not just having someone sit in the hospital with you while you’re having treatment – it’s also having someone to call if you’ve got questions. It’s having someone to have as an emotional crutch.

“Because not only you’re going through something that’s so emotional and difficult, but you’re also trying to educate yourself on something that’s so complicated … so any level of support and care that breast care nurses offer is just so important.”

He says even within his own immediate family, including dad Tony and siblings Peter and Julia, they’ve all processed the grief at different speeds and in different ways.

“I think part of the reason why I thought I was ready, and it was nice to talk to you about Mum today, is because it’s nice to keep her memory alive, and to remember all the wonderful things about her,” he says.

Christa Tobin. By speaking out, James hopes to keep her memory alive.

“Over the last four years, when we are together, we share stories and we acknowledge her birthdays and important milestones. Of course she’s always in our minds, and in our private thoughts, but we find that it’s also nice to verbalise that and actively remember.

“Mum and her memory, and parts of her, are with me every day, and it’s those moments – birthdays and Christmas and special moments – that it comes up even more.

“And there’s things that you wish she would be around for.

“I don’t have kids yet, but you wish that your kids would have known their grandmother, or their ‘Oma’, and that they would have had the good fortune to be influenced by her and her personality and her character and her energy.

“Since Mum died, my sister has had another child and I know she feels the same way.

“I would have loved her to be there on the day that I get married – things like that.”

The Tobin family: Patch, Julia, Eddison and Jason Capuano, with the late Christa Tobin, James' dad Tony, and brother Peter with James.

Tobin’s dad Tony was an Aussie seeing the world when he met German-born and raised Christa in London. They returned to Sydney together in the late ’70s – a big city that Tobin says was a culture shock for his mum, who grew up in the small village of Schramberg. That small German town was where Tobin spent the fourth anniversary of his mother’s death this year, remembering her surrounded by the place that made up who she was.

“That was where my mum spent a lot of her life, and where my grandparents lived. I was there with Farrah, my girlfriend, and my uncle – who is actually not my uncle but my mum’s cousin – and while my grandparents have been gone for a while now, I hadn’t been back to that part of Germany in quite a few years,” he says.

“It was an amazing experience, because as much as you can rem ember things in your head, actually physically being in a place, walking through the streets, smelling the smells and tasting the food … the flavours that just throw you back to your childhood in an instant.

“I was just rich with emotion and memories, and a beautiful experience.

“I was really glad to be there, on that day, with those people.

Christa Tobin with children Julia, Peter and James in the Black Forest in Germany, just outside the city of Schramberg, where Christa was raised.

“Mum embraced Australia – but she also instilled in us and kept alive the German way of life and the German traditions.

“We would only go to Germany normally at Christmas time, every couple of years, but the German side of our family and of our story is just as strong as the as the Australian side.”

While his work is very public, the TV personality identifies as a “fairly private person” – and grief has proven that.

“I’d like to think I’m a fairly open book. but going through grief was a long process, and it was full of ups and downs,” he says.

“You just can’t comprehend what the impact is going to be when it actually happens – and it wasn’t until Mum died that I realised all the ways that she had affected me and impacted my life.

“The lessons that she had taught me – and not overt lessons – lessons she taught me through her actions and watching how she treated people and how she conducted herself.

“It’s those sorts of things I just didn’t see until after she had died, and then all of a sudden, it becomes glaringly obvious.

“One thing my mum told me was to embrace life – she was someone who kept on doing and trying new things right up until her death.

“I mean, she took ballet lessons in the last year of her life.

“Life is for living.”

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