RTE weather woman Joanna Donnelly has opened up about grieving the loss of her mother who died in 2021 after undergoing minor surgery.
Joanna told of her sadness over the loss of her mother Marie, who passed away in September that year.
But she said she is learning to cope with the sudden loss and has even returned back to attending musicals with her own daughter, although she said it was “brutal” for her “emotionally”.
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She said: “I still sob occasionally but you learn to live with the loss.
“I managed to go back to my first musical a few months ago, because that is what mum and me always did.
“(Her daughter) Nicci and I went to see My Fair Lady. It was brutal for me emotionally but if I didn’t go, I reckon I’d never go, and my mother wouldn’t have wanted that.
“I believe that there is an afterlife insofar, it reminds me of mum,” she told the RTE Guide.
She recalled how robins in her garden and their nests in her hawthorn hedge remind her of her late mother.
Last year, Joanna said she wasn’t ready for her mother to go.
“I wasn’t ready for mum to go.
"She was fit and healthy and a huge part of my life.
"It's like a piece of me is missing. I'm still waiting for Mum to walk in the door."
"When I need to get new clothes for TV I'm thinking 'what's the point?'
"I have to force myself to buy stuff and when I look at myself in the mirror I wonder if she would like it.
"Mum was a part of me and it's impossibly sad at times.
"But she's in my head all the time. Every time a flower blooms in my garden I say: 'Look at that, Mum!'"
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