Annabel Croft has revealed that she still sleeps with her late husband’s scarf.
The Wimbledon presenter lost her partner, Mel Coleman, to a short battle with cancer last year.
Speaking candidly about her grief journey, Croft also shared her regret of not complimenting him enough while he was alive.
The 58-year-old explained that she still wore clothes Mel loved as she shared the ways she tried to feel close to her late husband. “I sleep with his scarf,” Croft told the Style DNA podcast.
“I have his scarf that he was wearing for all the treatments and everything, and it sort of smells of him. So I go to bed and sleep with his scarf by my pillow.”
The former Strictly contestant joked that she initially wasn’t a fan of the scarf, adding: “It’s an awful scarf. But he absolutely loved it so I sleep with it in my bed.”
Croft also continues to wear outfits she knew Mel loved, explaining that “he really did love my fashion”.
She added: “I am conscious that I do wear things that I know that he would have loved. So yeah, I’ll continue to do that.”
One example is a dress she bought days before he passed away. “I brought it back to the house and put it on to show him and I had visualised I would wear that dress with him,” the retired tennis star said.
“And I’d always visualised, ‘Oh, this is what I’m going to wear when we’re on holiday together.’ And he really loved it.
“Of course, I didn’t wear it until just recently and then it dawned on me that, ‘Oh my god, that was the dress that I bought just before he died.’”
Croft said her late husband was “always incredibly complimentary” of what she wore, and she now regrets not paying him enough compliments in return.
“He always made me feel like the most important woman in the world,” she recalled.
“He did make me feel like that. And, you know, I loved wearing clothes for him, actually, because he absolutely loved everything that I wore, always paid me compliments.
“And I shall regret that I didn’t pay him enough compliments. I always said he was getting more handsome and ageing way better than me, and he was getting more handsome every day. He was somebody who aged well and became more handsome as he got older.”
