Former Manchester United and England defender Rio Ferdinand, who lost his wife Rebecca to cancer in 2015, has spoken about how tough life has been as a single parent in an upcoming BBC documentary Rio Ferdinand: Being Mum and Dad.
Ferdinand, who has three children — sons Lorenz and Tate, and daughter Tia who were nine, six and four-years-old respectively at the time of Rebecca’s death, said he felt helpless during the first few months, The Telegraph reported.
“In football you don’t lift a finger until you go over the white line to play,” Ferdinand said. “Everything is done for you … Then at home we’d go on holiday, for instance, and all I had to do was pack my own bag because Rebecca packed. It was even, like: ‘How do I go to the doctor’s?’ I’d only ever seen the club doctor. I didn’t have a clue,” he added.
Ferdinand also spoke about the difficulties of performing the dual roles of being mum and dad, “She used to fix their beds a certain way, and when they’d tell me it almost felt like a slight. I’d think: ‘Whatever I do isn’t going to be good enough.’”
“I used to wake up, get dressed, have some breakfast with them, and then I’d take them, drop them off and get out and go to training, and think I was doing my bit. But that’s the easy bit … Where are their shoes? Where are their clothes? Where are their bags?,” the 38-year-old added.
Ferdinand revealed that it was hard helping his kids adapt to Rebecca’s passing. The six-time Premier League winner said one of his sons noticed a wall of greetings cards in the hospital,
“He said: ‘What’s that Dad?’ I said: ‘Oh, that’s some of the thank you cards patients and families have left for the doctors and the nurses on the ward, for helping their mum and dad or whoever they’ve had up there.’ He went: ‘Well, they didn’t help my mum,’ and he just walked off.’”
He admitted to have taken too drinking heavily soon after his wife’s death.
‘At the beginning I was drinking a lot at night time,” Ferdinand said. I’d come back down in the middle of the night and probably drink a lot for the first three or four months,” he revealed.
The ordeal Ferdinand said gave him a better understanding of how grief can push someone towards suicide.
“I used to think about people who commit suicide or attempt to, how can you be so selfish? But now you know how they feel. And if I didn’t have that network of people or my kids who I use as an inspiration to be able to get up and think straight, then, yeah I can sympathise,” he said.