Former England captain Rio Ferdinand has decided to speak out about coping with the loss of his wife, Rebecca, to breast cancer in 2015.
A documentary about grief is to air on BBC One tomorrow night, and Rio is said to share his experience of coping with his wife's death with three children at home.
Speaking to BBC Radio 5 live ahead of the documentary’s release, Rio revealed that his children were unable to speak to him about how they were feeling for a very long time after their mother died.
“I’d been starting conversations with them to try and get how they were feeling out, and they would just shut me down, walk away, close the conversation down completely,” the dad-of-three said.
Rio and Rebecca had three children together; Lorenz, 10, Tate, eight, and Tia, five, before she died at the age of 34, in May 2015.
The former Manchester United defender told 5 live’s Emma Barnett that he struggled to talk to his three children about their mum for a long time.
“I didn’t know any techniques to speak to the children. I didn’t know what buttons to push.”
After starting a memory jar for the family, Rio found it was the only way his children would open up and talk about their happy memories of their mum.
“It kind of opened everything up and it was a beautiful moment just seeing them talk happily and being joyful about their mum rather than it being sad and negative moments.
“It switched it from dark to bright.”
Rio also opened up about his own grief, and said that the documentary will show the dark places he found himself in, in the months after Rebecca’s death.
“At the beginning, I’d sit and think, ‘how am I ever going to be happy?’
"I can't see a point where I'm ever going to be able to smile, because I can get happy over here, but then I look at my children - and that brings you right back into sadness again because they haven't got a mum."
In recent months, there has been much speculation that Rio is in a new relationship, however, the dad-of-three says his children are the most important thing in his life.
“Protecting my children is always the biggest thing for me... and that's why I'm fearful of with things being in the press," Rio said.
"But the documentary has taught me there isn't a right time for anything like that, for if you're going to move on in a relationship... there is no right time.
"The only person who knows the right time is the person in those shoes. I've never spoken about my relationships in the past, in the public eye, and I'm not going to start talking about relationships or potential relationships that people are reporting on now."
