Former RTE newsreader Una O'Hagan has opened up about her husband Colm Keane's death for the first time, and shared their final words to each other befores his sad passing two months ago.
In an emotional conversation, the well known newscaster said she feels like half of her is missing since his passing in January, after 36 years spent together.
But she told how she finds consolation in feeling that he is now with their late son, Sean, who passed away in 2007.
Opening up about her grief for the first time since Colm’s passing in January, aged 70, after being diagnosed with cancer, she said she is doing ‘okay’ and credited the author for preparing her to go on before his death.
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“He had done a lot of preparation to make sure that I would be [okay], just practicalities. I’m doing okay. After 36 years, it feels slightly as if half of you is gone or you lost your right arm.”
“But I know he is in a good place.
“I know wherever he is he is with Sean and the people he loves.”
In an emotional interview with Ryan Tubridy on his RTE Radio 1 show on Wednesday, Una held back tears as she recalled the former RTE journalist’s final moments.
Una, 60, said: “It was such a privilege to be with him. It was in the Waterford Hospice, I held his hand. I told him I loved him.
“I told him that Sean loved him, that he was a great dad and that he had left a wonderful legacy.
“And again, tying in with the journey theme, it was like, you know when you’re on a flight and you’re coming into land and it’s the perfect flight. You feel the engines slowing down and that was Colm.
“The engine slowed and slowed and then you find you’re on the ground and it’s just so peaceful. He just slowed and slowed and then passed away.”
“And there was such a sense of peace when he died. It was just incredible.”
Speaking on the show to launch his new book on his behalf, ‘Journey’s End: The Truth about Life After Death’, Una also told how Colm felt a comfort in knowing where he was going before he died, saying: “He said ‘I know where I am going, I know I am going to the light’.
“The one thing that brought him any agitation was ‘you have to bring the book out’ and I said I would. And so I am.”
Looking back on their life with fondness, Una, who is also an author, recalled the day they met for the first time in the RTE canteen, joking ‘there was nothing romantic about it’.
“I looked at him, he looked at me. He rang me even though he said I rang him. I didn’t. We just kind of took it from there.”
On what she misses most, she went on: “Every now and again I think, ‘Oh, I must tell Colm that’. We were together for 36 years and over the years I’ve watched people in a couple in restaurants or pubs. They sit there and they don’t say a word to each other. Whereas, we just never stopped talking.”
Una also opened up about the tough times in their life, after the tragic death of their only son Seán Keane in 2007, following a battle with cancer.
The former Six One News host, who stepped away from her job to care for her son when he got ill in 2005, said: “When he was 17, he got cancer, osteosarcoma in the right leg. It had spread to the lungs and after two and a half years, he died.”
She explained that she and Colm dealt with Sean’s passing differently saying: “It shattered both of us separately and together”.
“I remember after the funeral I put my hand in Colm’s hand because there was the kind of question, ‘What do we do now?’ The world has ended.
“We went home but one of the things that actually kept us together was an odd little observation but that night Colm had a terrible cold.
“I remember saying, ‘I’ll make you some Lemsip’. I was doing it in the kitchen and I had looked after Sean for two and a half years. I needed somebody else to look after.”
