Eswatini-born actor Richard E Grant still has an “ongoing conversation” with his late wife, Joan Washington, who died in 2021.
Her death plunged him into an “abyss of grief”. They met in 1983, and married three years later.
There is one dying wish of hers he refused to honour. A month before she died, she recorded a poem and requested Richard play it on their daughter Olivia’s wedding day.
“It would have wiped everybody out. That’s the brutal bit,” Richard shared. So, instead, someone close to the family read the poem aloud.
Richard and Joan met in the 1980s in London and were married for 38 years (Credit: Splash News)
Richard E Grant performs nightly ritual for his wife four years after her death
Such is the strength and endurance of Richard E Grant’s love for his late wife Joan Washington.
The Withnail And I star, now 68 years old, lost his life partner four years ago. Yet he still emails her regularly – nightly, even – with news of what he got up to that day.
“I have no woolly spiritual delusion that she’s hearing this, or that I’m going to get a response, but it somehow keeps the connection going,” he told Davina McCall on an episode of her Begin Again podcast earlier this year.
“So I write to her – ‘Dear J, today would really have amused you…’ It makes it feel like that person is still there – it’s an ongoing conversation.”
Grant lost his mother two years after his wife died (Credit: Begin Again with Davina McCall/YouTube)
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