Grieving Vinnie takes final love letter from tragic wife everywhere he goes
EVERYWHERE Vinnie Jones goes, he takes with him a white card emblazoned with the words “Always Believe Something Wonderful is Going to Happen”.
Inside is the final love letter from wife Tanya, written before she lost her cancer battle.
The former Wimbledon footballer admits he was left in pieces after reading it.
He said: “I broke down. Now, I take it everywhere I go so Tanya is always with me.”
Tanya, 53, wrote the card in July, as her life slipped away, to give Vinnie strength. The actor said: “She left it with her precious diaries.
“Inside she had written: ‘To my love Vin, something wonderful happens to me every day. It’s being with you. You are my morning sunshine the moment I wake. All my love, Tanya.’ I broke down when I read it because I loved her like that too.”
Reunited
Sobbing Vinnie said he is counting the days until he is reunited with the love of his life.
And he has bought an adjacent cemetery plot so his ashes can be buried alongside Tanya’s.
She endured a six-year battle after being diagnosed with melanoma in 2013 but last year it spread to her brain.
Vinnie, 54, yesterday revealed he believes he was visited by her spirit in the hours after her death. He now believes she is waiting for him in the afterlife.
He said: “I’m content to crash through the rest of my life in Heaven’s waiting room until Tanya calls me. The rest of my life is not a long time if we are going to be together for eternity.
“But I want to live to do the right thing by our daughter, Kaley, and Tanya’s family.
“But she’ll call me when the time is right.” Vinnie and Tanya met when they were children in their hometown of Watford. He said: “I can’t remember if I fancied her straight away but she was always very striking.”
But the pair never got together until after Tanya’s first marriage broke down. By then, issues with her health were already beginning to loom. She almost died in childbirth with Kaley, 32, who Vinnie later adopted, and had to have an emergency heart transplant. When he asked Tanya’s dad Lou, 82, if he could marry her, he warned him life would be difficult because of her health. But he was unperturbed. Vinnie recalled: “I promised him I loved her and that never changed and never will.”
Tanya never spoke about dying or her wishes. He said: “I begged doctors not to tell her she was nearing the end when things got really bad. We just couldn’t talk about her dying because I just couldn’t accept it.”
Tanya was cremated and her ashes buried in LA’s Forest Lawn Cemetery. Vinnie said. “There’s a tree next to her plot for Kaley to sit under. I’ve already bought the plot next to her so my ashes can be buried there too, and we can be together forever.”
Tanya died weeks after the couple’s 25th wedding anniversary.
They had planned to mark the occasion by flying family and friends from the UK for a New Year’s Eve party in LA. It was last Christmas Eve when the couple received a call from Tanya’s doctor, who said the cancer had spread. Vinnie said: “We broke down in each other’s arms. It was the first time we really both broke down. That was when Tanya knew it could be her last Christmas.
“She was hugging friends and family and saying, ‘Every moment is precious.’ I think they maybe knew.” Whenever he misses his true love the most, Vinnie knows he only has to reach for the card to feel her by his side once more.