Parents in tears over ‘secret message’ from son who died after rare diagnosis

1 September 2025, 15:55

The Repair Shop featured the emotional story of John and Margaret who hoped to restore their son's hidden message.

Parents were left in tears on The Repair Shop when they discovered a 'secret message' from their late son.

John Ivin and his wife Margaret appeared on the show in the hopes of reconstructing a message they discovered behind their kitchen cupboard, written by their son Chris who passed away 15 years ago.

The couple – who lost their son when he was 34 -years-old – found a message he'd left on the wallpaper before he died, and were desperate to reconstruct the scrawling.

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The message from Chris read: "This is original wallpaper. Friday 4:15, 8th December 1989. Please leave this wallpaper, Chris."

Margaret told the experts that builders had discovered the writing whilst they were redisgning their kitchen.

The mum revealed: "Where they’d taken one of the original cupboards off the wall, this was behind it and it was a complete shock to see it there."

The pair chose to keep Chris's message and with the help of the builders they managed to remove it from the wall. However over the years the section of wall he wrote on disintegrated slightly, meaning Margaret and John were keen to have the message repaired.

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Specialist Rob Fraser took on the challenge, confessing: "There’s so much going on and the paper is really fragmented, so that’s very risky. I’ll have to take my time, I might need some help."

He added: "It’s not going to be easy. I need to get eyes on all these pieces and work out what condition each individual piece is in. I’m really nervous about handling this. This is gypsum plaster, which is very brittle."

Luckily Rob managed to restore the writing to its former glory and presented it in a frame for the couple to keep.

When the message was revealed to Margaret and Jon the couple were taken aback, stating: "Even the torn bits of paper are back together. This is better than I ever would have imagined it to be."

Margaret went on to add: "What can I say? What can I say? It’s funny handwriting, he would be chuffed to bits to see that. I mean, he was 14? And he would’ve been 48 this year."

This comes after the doting parents discussed Chris's love for leaving messages for them, revealing: "He would often scribble little notes that he would leave around the house, some of them saying 'I love you'."

Fans quickly took to X, formally known as Twitter, to discuss the moving scene, with one user writing: "That wallpaper repair is superb. #therepairshop"

Another added: "Yeah that one's emotional... #therepairshop"

While a third stated: "I love #therepairshop and that bit of old plaster with writing from their son that passed away was a brilliant job and soooooo moving"

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