Uche Ojeh, her spouse of 17 years, died in May 2025 from an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Today’s Sheinelle Jones says she’s still a ‘walking ball of grief’ 1 year after husband’s death

Uche Ojeh, her spouse of 17 years, died in May 2025 from an aggressive form of brain cancer.

By Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre

Mekishana Pierre is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2025. Her work has previously appeared on Entertainment Tonight and Popsugar.

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May 22, 2026 10:17 a.m. ET

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Sheinelle Jones; Jones with her late husband, Uche Ojeh. Credit:

- Sheinelle Jones opened up about her grief and parenting her three children a year after the death of her husband, Uche Ojeh.

- "As a mom, you just want to fix it — you don't want your kids to hurt," she said.

- Ojeh, her partner of 17 years, died in May 2025 from an aggressive form of brain cancer.

One year after the death of her husband, Sheinelle Jones is opening up about parenting their three children and figuring out how to move forward with her life.

Jones admitted that she's still a "walking ball of grief" as she mourned the loss of her late partner, Uche Ojeh, who died in May 2025 from an aggressive form of brain cancer, during her recent appearance on the *All There Is With Anderson Cooper* podcast,

Jones and Ojeh, whose full name was Uchechukwuka Adenola Ojeh, were college sweethearts. They met at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., in the late '90s when she, a freshman, offered to show him, a visiting high school senior, around campus. The couple married in Jones' hometown of Philadelphia in 2007 and had three children: their son, Kayin, 16, and fraternal twins Clara and Uche, 13.

"As a mom, it's tough because you don't want to make them sad," Jones said of parenting her teens through their own grief. "We're all in one chat and there'll be times when I'm tempted to [share something that crossed my feed], but then I'm worried like, what if they're leaving school when they get it, or if they're with their friends, you know? There's a tap dance as their mom allowing us all to be vulnerable and allowing us to have space and time to reflect, and also a time to show that we can't move on but we can move forward with that."

Jones added that her "biggest pain" isn't her own — it's that she can't always make things better for her kids. "As a mom you just want to fix it — you don't want your kids to hurt," she said on the podcast. "I can't fix this and I think, when he passed, the blow that it was and the grief in all of it, for me not to be able to fix it, even now, it's excruciating. I can't take that pain away. They have to learn how to deal with it and wrestle with it and make sense of it."

Sheinelle Jones and Uche Ojeh in 2019.

Nathan Congleton/NBC

Jones also admitted to Cooper that part of the reason she wanted to have her conversation with him is because she wasn't able to find resources when she searched for them after Ojeh's death.

When asked whether her kids talk about their father, Jones said photos of Ojeh are all over their house, which is both a blessing and a curse. "But you know what's starting to rattle me a little bit? … They're all current pictures within the last couple of years," she said. "As we move through each passing day, he stays the same. And I know that the kids are going to get older, and so the pictures are there, and right now we're all still the same ... It feels like not a fair shot that he didn't get to keep going."

As she began to fight back tears, Jones confessed that she sometimes "wrestles" with the idea of keeping the photos up, but has left them up so the family can continue to keep Ojeh in their lives.

"I have to learn to parent differently," she added, saying that Ojeh was generally the stricter parent and she has had to adapt with him gone. "I'm kind of living it in real time, how I want to parent. And there are some things that I just can't [do], and I've learned to ask for help."

Jones has chronicled her grieving process since sharing the news of her late husband's death last May, and she'll delve deeper into her healing in her new book, *Through Mom's Eyes*. During a chat with her *Today *cohost Jenna Bush Hager in April, she said she dedicated the book to her three children.

"I want my kids to know that they are my everything," she told Hager. "Because what I've realized is that tomorrow is not promised, and I think because my life has been turned upside down and they've already lost a parent, it made me question, 'What would I want to leave on this planet? And what do I want to leave for my kids?'"

Tearing up, she continued, "If there's a time when I'm not with them, they have this book. And they know their mom through this book."

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Sheinelle Jones tears up after her kids return to 'Today' for first time since their dad's death

Jones said *Through Mom's Eyes* was years in the making, sharing that she'd been working on the project even before her husband got sick. "He pushed me to write this book," Jones said. "He was fighting glioblastoma, which is a horrible brain cancer. After his very first brain surgery, he woke up and … I didn't know how he would talk or would he be okay?"

She went on to recount the sweet moment they shared. "We gave each other a hug and we looked at each other," she recalled. "And then he goes, 'Where's your laptop? You said you were gonna write.'"

Jones continued, "This book means so much to me because the people who poured into me aren't with me. I feel like they're with me in heaven, but I'm still doing this for them, for sure."

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