Tommy Tiernan has opened up about the pain of losing his mother to suicide in 2010 – admitting the way she died wasn’t “a surprise” to him.
The comedian spoke honestly about the death of his mother Helen – revealing for the first time that she killed herself. The Navan man said: “So my mam basically took her own life in 2010 and what I think happened, definitely not with all suicides, but with some people… I think my mam, she obviously found things incredibly difficult.
“But she also lived at a strange distance from us, even though she was in the same house. There was a part of her that wasn’t comfortable or couldn’t cope with or didn’t want or wasn’t able for maybe – a better way of saying it – the kind of intimacy of family life.
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“But she was a woman at the same time who was hugely part of setting up the first Meath Women’s Refuge. So herself and her friend would’ve been part of a small collective of women in Navan in the 80s who decided let’s set up a refuge for battered wives.
“There could be children all around the housing estate that we grew up in saying, ‘Your mam really looked after me. Any time my mam was sick, your mam looked after me’ and ‘I loved your mam’ and all that kind of stuff. But when it got to her own house she just couldn’t share in the same way.
“She couldn’t cope. When someone who has lived like that dies the way mam did, part of it isn’t a surprise. Sometimes it’s still the same. The relationship goes on.”
The 53-year-old told how he still has that relationship with his mother, saying over the years he has learned to love her more in death. Tommy said: “She would always be on my mind in some kind of way. I would always be in dialogue with her. I would always be thinking about the strange, odd, quare life that she had.”
The Derry Girls star told listeners on RTE Radio One he was unsure if his mother ever sought professional help. He added: “It’s not to say that she wasn’t a great mother.
“I love her more than I did when she was alive. I’ve more empathy towards her. But there’s still sharks in that particular pool. There’s a danger. So it is a gradual thing. It goes on and on.”
Tommy made the shock revelations on RTE Radio One while talking about the return of his popular Saturday night television chat show.
- The Tommy Tiernan Show starts on RTE One tonight at 9.40pm.
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