Rugby legend heartbroken after wife's death as he tells of poignant final act

Irish Daily Mirror

05-08-2025

Scotland rugby legend Scott Hastings has spoken candidly about the death of his beloved wife Jenny, disclosing that he now swims weekly at the very location where she took her life.
Jenny, a 60-year-old mum-of-two, went missing on September 3 last year whilst swimming at Wardie Bay in Edinburgh, a spot she frequented regularly. She was reported as missing, prompting an extensive search operation to be launched immediately, but tragically her body was found several days later on what would have been the couple's 34th wedding anniversary.
In a statement, Jenny's relatives revealed that she had battled mental health struggles since her teenage years, while she had been gripped by severe depression as an adult and had previously attempted suicide.
A "broken-hearted" Hastings honoured his wife at the time, saying: "She suffered for well over 20 years. She just got herself into a headspace and decided that was the best option, despite having had visits from doctors within 40 hours, and a mental health practitioner had visited literally hours before, but the trickery of the mind is so difficult.
"I'm utterly broken-hearted, she was such a beautiful, loving mother, wife, sister and we miss her dearly. Suicide is preventable and for many, many years Jenny prevented suicide. Unfortunately, she worked out that she felt that she was doing the right thing."
Almost twelve months after Jenny's passing, Hastings - who earned 65 caps for Scotland and toured twice with the British and Irish Lions - has spoken candidly about the heartbreak, disclosing that he takes to the open waters every Friday at the very location where his wife died, reports Wales Online.
"[It's] beautiful and calming," he told The Sunday Times, before acknowledging that his thoughts "wanders out to the buoy where she was".
"She was a water baby," he continued. "This time last year we were on a cruise in the Norwegian fjords. I swam in the sea with her for the first time. It was just exhilarating."
Reflecting on how the tragedy unfolded and revealing his wife's poignant final act towards him, Hastings said: "When I arrived at Wardie Bay, I saw her bag was there, I saw the buoy, but I didn't see her. I knew she'd gone.
"What more could we have done? There was a secrecy behind it. She carried out her plan. This was her wish. That I find very hard to come to terms with.
"[There were] no notes or anything like that, but under my pillow she left a [self-help] book entitled Don't Worry. She got all the charity bags and put all of her clothes in them - we didn't have to deal with it.
"She was going to carry out her plan. It's unfathomable for us but it made total sense to her."
Hastings, who serves as an ambassador for mental health charity Support in Mind Scotland, is now backing his mate and former team-mate Iain Sinclair with a 60-mile swim across the Caledonian Canal. The aim is to raise funds for mental health charities and other worthy causes.
While he says that becoming an advocate for mental health has been part of the "healing process" for him, however, the60-year-oldadmits the idea of growing old without Jenny "really upsets" him.
"The tragic thing is that I can't grow old with her," he expressed. "That really upsets me, because there was a life ahead of us, and she didn't see that. I miss her every day.
"We returned her ashes back into the water a couple of weeks [after her death], because that was where she wanted to be," the ex-Scotland international added.
"I didn't have to identify her body, so my memory of Jenny is just this radiant, happy person. Yes, she struggled. But she was at peace in the water."