The mum of tragic airman Corrie McKeague today celebrated his life and said his untimely death should inspire us all to live every day as if it’s our last.
Nicola Urquhart spoke to the Sunday Mirror hours before the RAF memorial to her son, who died after climbing into a bin on a night out.
Corrie’s 2016 disappearance sparked a huge manhunt but in March, an inquest ruled he had been crushed to death in a bin lorry.
Nicola said: “I have to accept it and be able to live my life. I’ve learned life is way too short.
“Corrie lived his every day like it was his last… I think that’s the way all of us should do it. Live it like it’s your last.
“Love your family, love your friends and enjoy life. Otherwise, what are we here for?”
Nicola, 53, spent years urging the police to keep searching for Corrie but said she had now found “peace”.
“My closure is being able to say, ‘There is nothing else I feel I could ask of anyone or I could do myself’. I am at peace,” she said.
“I don’t need to be asking for anywhere else to be searched now.”
Corrie, 23, vanished in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, in the early hours of September 24, 2016. Today’s service was at St Edmund’s Church in nearby Honington, close to his base.
Nicola thanked Corrie’s former bosses for organising it and said she and other relatives had picked the readings and hymns, as well as music by the City of Norwich Pipe Band.
She said: “It’s a day to celebrate Corrie… for us to officially publicly say goodbye to him and be able to not close that chapter in our lives, but say we are on to the next stage. It feels like the right thing to do.”
Guests at the memorial included Corrie’s daughter Ellie, who was born after he disappeared, his brother Darroch and his RAF colleagues.
Nicola, from Dunfermline in Scotland, said: “This memorial is really important to us as a family, as the RAF was Corrie’s life.
“It really meant a lot to him and it’s nice we get to attend and see Corrie was important to them as well.
“They have supported me, Ellie and her mum. I don’t know how we would have got through this without them.”
RAF Honington chief Piers ‘Dutch’ Holland said: “Our thoughts continue to be with Special Aircraftman McKeague’s family, friends and colleagues and all those whose lives he touched.”
