Vinnie Jones has said he still “struggles to comprehend” going to bed on his own four years on from the death of wife Tanya.
The couple had been married for 25 years when Tanya passed away aged 53 in 2019 following a six-year battle with skin cancer.
The former footballer recalled recently visiting her grave on what would have been their wedding anniversary and revealed that he is still in the thick of grief, branding it “f***ing exhausting”.
Speaking to Stuff NZ, Jones, who has sought help from a psychologist, shared: “[Grief] is a ghost, it’s a blanket. It wraps around you and it pulls you down. You don’t know when it’s going to happen, why it happens. It just happens.
“You’ve got to try and get your head above water, breathe in as long as you can because you know you’re going to be pulled under again.
“You got to give people what they want, or you f*****g drown. It’s f***ing exhausting [Sometimes I want to] build a 50 foot wall around to keep everybody out and keep me in,” the 58-year-old added.
“My spirit may be broken inside, but I think I’ve got enough knowledge and enough experience to cope with it.”
Tanya died at their home in Los Angeles six years after being diagnosed with melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, in 2013.
The actor has previously spoken candidly about mourning his late wife and revealed that he “talks to her all the time”.
He told the Sun: “I talk to her all of the time. Constantly, every day. We have a little chat when I’m making my bed.
“This morning I went, ‘There you go babe, look’, and it wasn’t my best bed-making, so I re-did it.”
Following his wife’s death, the film star sold their LA home, saying it would be too difficult to live there without Tanya and bought the property next door, where Kayley, Tanya’s daughter from a previous relationship, lives.
