Annabel Croft hasn't picked up her husband's ashes from funeral director
Watch: Annabel Croft hasn't collected her husband's ashes from funeral director
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Annabel Croft has shared that she still cannot bring herself to collect her late husband's ashes from the funeral director, nearly a year on from his death.
Tennis ace Croft, who reached the semi-finals of Strictly Come Dancing 2023 which she has said helped her to cope with her grief, opened up on the heartbreaking reason why she found it so difficult to collect Mel Coleman's remains.
Croft lost Coleman, her husband of 30 years, in May just eight weeks after he was diagnosed with colon cancer and hosted a grief phone-in alongside agony aunt Deirdre Sanders on Tuesday's This Morning.
What, how, and why?
During Annabel Croft's star turn on Strictly alongside Johannes Radebe, she won the hearts of viewers by opening up on her grief after the shock death of her husband Mel Coleman who passed away in May just eight weeks after being diagnosed with colon cancer.
The former tennis player told how Coleman had been a huge fan of Strictly, and dedicated her couple's choice dance to him during her time on the show.
In Tuesday's This Morning, Croft joined agony aunt Deirdre Sanders to host a viewer phone-in on grief, which lead to some emotional moments as those calling in were brought to tears by sharing their stories.
One woman said that she had had to send a relative to collect her husband's ashes and Croft admitted that she still had not been able to collect Coleman's ashes, either.
She said: "If it's any consolation, I have not picked up my husband's ashes yet and I'm eight, nine months in. It was just the finality of knowing that my husband who was such a vibrant person, a vibrant character with such a great sense of humour, was suddenly going to be in this urn or this box and I still can't bring myself to do it.
"Sometimes I'm driving round in my car and I'm quite near the funeral directors and I think, should I just go and park the car and pick him up? But I just can't do it."
Croft added that she relied on the support of her friends, but said: "Sometimes I go home and I call it the geyser springs, that just come out of the ground like a pressure reliever. Sometimes I'm at home and I'm just uncontrollably sobbing. I get it out and it's good that there's no one around. I feel so much better when it's passed."
What else happened on This Morning?
Croft also offered the show's callers advice on how she had been trying to cope with her grief over the last year, admitting that she never wanted to get over her husband's death. The mum-of-three shared: "Sometimes I go to bed at night and I just talk to him, and in the morning I talk to him as well and I sometimes say, where are you?"
Talking to one caller who asked if his grief would get easier over time, she said: "I'm not sure it's ever going to get better. At the moment I feel like, how could anybody replace what Mel was to me. All I hope is that I'm going to live out the rest of my life in the most positive way that I can for our children and our family...I'm not sure that we ever want to move on."
She added that dancing with Radebe had been a huge help to her, saying: "I have laughed, I laughed with Johannes a lot on Strictly. I think Mel would want me to laugh, he had a great sense of humour. I would love everybody out there who's suffering from so much grief to not feel guilty about finding happiness again. To be morbid for the rest of your life would be a terrible thing."
This Morning airs on ITV at 10am on weekdays.
Read more: Annabel Croft
Annabel Croft was the ultimate Strictly star - she moved us all (The Telegraph, 6 min read)
Annabel Croft's bond with Johannes Radebe (BANG Showbiz, 2 min read)
Annabel Croft opens up on friendship with Bear Grylls: 'He's a special person' (The Independent, 2 min read)
This article originally appeared on Yahoo TV UK at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/annabel-croft-husband-ashes-this-morning-143104860.html
