The 78-year-old Delilah singer lost his wife of nearly 60 years two years ago when she died of lung cancer. Opening up on his grief, The Voice UK coach said he partly blames himself for her death as he admitted he asks himself if he should have made Melinda go to the doctor. “After I lost my wife, lyrics to a Bob Dylan song reminded me of her. It’s called What Good Am I?” he explained. “I was reading into the lyrics thinking, Jesus Christ… was I partly to blame? Should I have woken up before?”
However, Tom said there was nothing he could have done, saying: “The reality is I couldn’t really have done anything because by the time we found out about her cancer it was too late. So there’s not a lot you can do.
“But then you start to think, what if I had forced her to go to the doctors? Because she didn’t go.
“You think, s**t, maybe I should have said she had to.”
Speaking about struggling with grief after his wife’s death, the singer said: “When something like that happens, it’s so devastating you don’t know how to deal with everything.
“It was something I’d never dealt with before.”
The popstar was also asked he he thinks he will ever find love again, to which he replied: “I don’t think so.”
He called time a “healer”, adding: “Things sink in and you realise, this is it. This it the way it’s going to be.
“So you look at it more realistically as time goes on.”
Tom and Melina where childhood sweethearts who starting dating when they were 15 and married when they were both 16, in 1957.
Shortly afterwards, they welcomed their son Mark together.
She died at the age of 75 at Cedars-Sinai hospital in LA in 2016 after being diagnosed with lung cancer.
He previously said his son Mark helped him cope with the grief of Melinda’s death, telling the Sunday Mirror: “Mark helped tremendously.
“He said, ‘There is a lady you should see.’ She consoled a lot of things.
“She said to me, ‘You’ve got to carry on. If you don’t, you will do,” he recalled.
“I thought of my family, my son, my daughter and my grandchildren — all of that.”
Tom has also said he struggled to get out of bed some days after Melinda died, saying: “I didn’t know whether I would make it.
“There were days when I felt I couldn’t get up.”
The Voice UK continues next Saturday at 8pm on ITV.
For information and support in dealing with grief, visit https://www.cruse.org.uk/get-help/local-services