VINNIE JONES AGONY I never told my wife she was dying.. I didn’t want her to know
STAR ‘WON’T LOVE EVER AGAIN’
GRIEVING Vinnie Jones has revealed how love stopped him telling his wife Tanya she was dying of cancer.
The footballer-turned-actor told of her last moments surrounded by family members including him and daughter Kaley at their Hollywood home.
He recalled feeling her soul leave the room as she slipped away, aged 53, after a long battle with the disease.
“In that last week of her life the doctors said there were no more treatments,” said Vinnie, 54. “I never told her she was dying. We never spoke of that. I didn’t want her to know.
“But in hospital she kept saying, ‘Take me home – can I go home now?’
“She desperately wanted that. So did she know? Probably.”
He went on: “I slept in the hospital every night she was there. Kaley would arrive every morning. Tanya never slept one night in hospital without me there. I was always by her side.
“In the week of her death, the doctors said very nicely, ‘These are your options – we don’t know if it is going to be months or weeks’.
“Through my grief I said, ‘I don’t want her to be in any pain’. So we took her home. Straight away she was on oxygen, then fentanyl.
“We had some beautiful, innocent moments in those last days. Tanya would try to get out of the patio windows or she’d wake up and look and me and go, ‘You... you know’.
“Some of the moments would make you laugh. They were very special.”
Kisses
The couple were married for 25 years and Vinnie adopted Tanya’s daughter Kaley. They moved out to Hollywood after he won rave reviews for his movie debut in 1998’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Tanya was first diagnosed with cancer six years ago and went for treatment to Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.
Vinnie said: “She’d sleep a lot, then wake up and fall asleep again. The medics told me, ‘Talk away – she’s listening to you’.
“Once we were talking about her horse and she was fast asleep. All of a sudden she put her hands up like she was riding a horse and stroking it.”
Vinnie’s voice choked with emotion before he continued: “It proved to us she was listening.
“Then when she began an asking for morphine, , we all knew that was the countdown.”
In those final weeks he slept in a room opposite Tanya’s and they blew each other kisses. Vinnie nie fought his heartbreak as he told of the moments before efore Tan Tanya, a dressed in her navy Ralph Lauren pyjamas, died at home on July 6.
“I woke up to hear this coughing,” he recalled. “I’d read a lot of books you don’t want to read them but do – and I knew what that coughing meant. I flew up to her room. She
wa was gasping for breath for abo about 25 minutes. We got everyone i in t the room – her parents, her brother, Kaley – and the nurse was giving her morphine.
“We knew it was the end. We were cuddling her. I kissed her a lot and kept saying, ‘I love you’.”
Through tears he went on: “It was so peaceful, then her gasps got less and she went quiet. I looked at the nurse and said, ‘Has she gone?’ And that was it.
“It happened so quickly. You’re not prepared for it. So we all sat for an hour with her. We were completely numb. It was as though she was still sleeping. But she was gone.
“When she finally went it felt like Tinker Bell had released from her, like her spirit was moving in the room. I got peace from that.”
Vinnie said he got a sign from Tanya that night. “It was about midnight and I was last to go to bed,” he recalled.
“Tanya always used to blow me a kiss and I’d catch it to carry with me. I looked up as I went to go in and there was a small white light above me over the house.
“So I said, ‘Is that you babe?’ Then as I went inside I turned, blew her a kiss and threw it. And the light went over my head, across my vision and up into the sky. That was her saying, ‘We’re all done, everything’s good. I’m up there, I’ll wait for you.’
“I never believed in spiritual stuff. but now I do believe in an afterlife.”
Vinnie insisted he will not find love ever again after seeing his wife die.
“Tanya was the light of my life,” he said. “She’s the only one and I’ll never be with anyone else. She wouldn’t give me her blessing to meet someone else. I’d be astonished if that happens. I’m a shell now.”
“But I think I’ve only got a little way to go till I’m with her.”