Strictly’s Annabel Croft says she sleeps next to her late husband's ashes
Annabel Croft has revealed that she sleeps with her late husband Mel Coleman’s ashes next to her on what was his side of the bed.
The former tennis star, 58, say goodbye to Coleman on 24 May 2023, only 16 weeks after he was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. In a new interview, she said it took her 11 months to collect his ashes from the undertaker’s.
Speaking to The Times, Croft opened up about her grief since Coleman’s death. She described the experience of collecting his ashes together with her daughter Amber and figuring out where to place them once she got home.
"When we got home I put him down by the fireplace, but then I thought maybe we’d knock him over and mess him up," she said. "So I thought, 'OK, I’ll put him next to the bed'. So now he’s under the bedside table on his side of the bed, next to me."
Croft, who took part in Strictly Come Dancing last year and came in fourth place with Johannes Radebe, said she talks to Coleman and "[reaches] out for his hand every night".
"Every day I ask him, 'Where are you? Where did you go?' Death’s the ultimate thing and Mel went and did it without me."
Croft and Coleman were married for 36 years, having first met in 1988 while working on a BBC programme about sailing.
Coleman was diagnosed with incurable cancer that had spread from his colon to his liver and kidneys in January 2023, after complaining of "funny pains". While he felt well enough in the following weeks, even travelling to Portugal, Coleman developed sepsis and began to deteriorate quickly after the holiday. After calling an ambulance to take him to the hospital, they were given terrible news that Coleman was dying by a "cruel" nurse at Kingston Hospital, Croft recalled.
She described the nurse as a "psychopath" for appearing to take "glee and enjoyment… in Mel’s demise".
"She said to me, 'Listen, he has cancer, he’s going to die. We’re not resuscitating him'. It was evil beyond anything you could imagine. To this day I am traumatised by it," Croft continued.
Elsewhere in the interview, Croft revealed she has had people ask her out on dinner dates, but she is "not anywhere close" to ready to date again.
"It gives me the heebies to think about it,” she said. “It’s never say never, but I wouldn’t mind if it was never."
In September, Croft told ITV’s This Morning that she had started to clear out Coleman’s belongings from their home, 16 months after he died.
Watch: Strictly's Annabel Croft can't be at home for first Christmas without husband
She described her grief as being "like a physical pain". "Sometimes I can be driving the car and I feel like a dagger is going through me. It’s like a physical pain, it’s the shock of, 'Oh my goodness, I’m never going to speak to him again, I’m never going to hear his laughter'.
"In my sporting days, everything was always about living in the moment and for so much of my married life, Mel and I talked about the future every single day.
"We always were looking to the future and what it would be about. Of course, that future isn’t going to be there any more so I’m having to wrangle with that every single day," she said.
If you are grieving and need some extra support, you can visit www.sueryder.org/grief-support to get in touch with an online bereavement community, speak to a text-based ‘Grief Coach’, and access online counselling.
Read more about grief:
I'm A Grief Expert, These Are 6 Actually Useful Things To Do To Help Somebody Who Is Grieving (HuffPost, 3-min read)
What are the grief stages? Hairy Bikers' Si King talks struggle since Dave Myers' death (Yahoo Life UK, 6-min read)
Harry shares words of wisdom on coping with grief with bereaved children (PA Media, 3-min read)