Reverend Richard Coles has previously expressed his guilt over ‘abandoning’ his late partner, David, who passed away in 2019 after a long battle with alcoholism
Reverend Richard Coles said he felt he had “abandoned” his husband who tragically died in 2019 following a battle against alcoholism.
The 62-year-old musician – who performed in iconic bands in the ’80s including Bronski Beat and The Communards – was married to fellow priest David Oldham in 2010 and they remained together until David’s death nine years later. Richard – who was a contestant on the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing in 2017 and is part of the 2024 cast of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! – had struggled to watch David succumb to alcohol and wrote in his 2021 autobiography, The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss, that they stopped sharing a bed.
After alcohol caused David to develop liver disease, his sleep became more erratic – leading to the change in sleeping arrangements. However, Richard hinted he was haunted by this choice as he found his partner in their guest room holding a bucket full of vomit and blood as his sickness intensified.
Richard called 999 and was at David’s side when he passed away in hospital days later. The star wrote in his memoir that he was left feeling “that I was colluding in the medical abandonment of a 43-year-old man only halfway through an extraordinary life” when he agreed to having David’s life support switched off.
Speaking to The Guardian about the death of his partner, Richard revealed he argues with him when he visits his grave. He confided: “I get the strongest sense of David’s presence, precisely when you think I’d have the opposite sense, because I’m literally standing six feet over his deeply buried body. But I sit there and we discuss all the things we used to discuss. We argue.”
Going on to admit his partner would have been “furious” with details of his life and addiction being included in Richard’s book, the priest said: “There’s so much guilt anyway. “I think anyone who has shared their life with an addict, particularly someone who has died as a result of that addiction, you are beset by the various guilts that come with that. ‘Should I have done more?’ That thought pecks and pecks away at you.”
He also explained at the time that he sought the blessing of David’s family and hoped sharing his story could help others. He said: “David would have hated this book. Hated it. I just decided, well, it can’t hurt him now – and it might help other addicts’ spouses who are going through similar things. When David was at his worst it was so gruelling, so difficult for me as his husband, I felt like I was falling through space sometimes. And what I discovered, once he died, was how much I wanted to express what it had been like for me.”
Richard had previously discussed David’s addiction in 2021 with BBC Radio Northampton. He said: “Anyone who has loved an addict and lived with an addict will know how tough it is… [He] always had an enthusiastic fondness for alcohol. An enthusiastic fondness for alcohol when you’re 20 or 25 is one thing, when you’re 35 or 40 it’s another thing and his drinking just got out of control.”
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