Kiera Dignam has said that she is still "very numb" after her beloved dad Christy's sad death last month.
Aslan frontman and Finglas native Christy Dignam passed away aged 63 after a courageous 10 year battle against a rare blood cancer. His heartbroken daughter Christy spoke on Claire Byrne's RTE radio show today about her dad fought until the end, and even defied doctors' prognosis when he was put into palliative care.
Kiera, who is also a talented singer, told Claire Byrne on Friday: "I'm still very numb, which is probably why I'm able to sit here today. And I think anybody who's lost somebody knows it can hit you straight away or it can hit you after a couple of months.
"I'm still in the numb stage. So I'm hoping to cling on to that for dear life as long as I possibly can and distract myself and work hard and just try and be a little bit productive while I'm in this headspace."
Read more: Kiera Dignam performs 'Crazy World' in tribute at Dalymount Park
Kiera said that things got "really serious" for her dad Christy last year as he battled rare blood cancer and entered palliative care. "He has been sick for ten years but he always came back," she said.
"He went to hospital this week a year ago and since then, that's when things got really serious for us and really tough. It was back and forth to the hospital twice or three times a day and then when we got him home finally in November, we were kind of sent home with a timescale, which he outlived, like he always did.
"So, when it actually happened, it was very, very quick. When we were told 'OK, this is the final hours' and even then I was saying [to] the hospice nurse [who] came out to the house… and I said: ‘Look, I know you know your job, but you don't know my Da, he's always gone against anything in the history of medical science', but unfortunately, he didn't win this time."
Kiera also hailed the palliative care workers who cared for her dad. "It makes you believe in angels, that really does," she said.
But Kiera admitted that she found her beloved dad's funeral service to be difficult, as she didn't want to share her father’s funeral with the thousands of fans. She continued: "I'm a very private and very quiet person. And I've always shared my dad my whole life with the public and I didn't always like that.
"And I just felt in the lead-up to his death, I thought that I wanted that to be a private thing. I wanted it to be for us, I didn't want to share that day. When I was speaking to the undertaker who helped us he was saying, ‘You have no idea what's going on outside this house’."
Kiera said she put her phone away following her dad’s death, and had no idea about the thousands of tributes for him. She recalled how the undertaker called her to find out how they should give fans their chance to also pay their final respects.
"And he said that you can do it where you have your privacy and have absolute chaos... because they're going to try and find where you are, they’re going to want to be there and they mean well, but he said we need to try and organise that chaos.
"And that's basically what happened and I slept on it. I rang him back and I said, 'You know what, you're right.' "I think it was probably a little bit selfish of me to want to have that day just for us because he did belong to everybody else as well in a way.
"There was that aspect of him – the Christy aspect of him. He was Dad to me and Christopher to my mam, and [he was a] granddad, you know but I think it was important to give people that. To let people grieve and let fans be together and they all felt the same way.
"And in the long run, I actually would have regretted missing that because it was amazing and it was amazing support for us.
"He deserved to be celebrated. He had enough battles through his life and the biggest battle is the one he had in the last 10 years. And I think he deserved it to be honest, because he'd had a lot of knocks," she added.
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