Mrs Brown’s Boys actor Dermot O’Neill said he was feeling “lonely” after losing his wife Patricia to cancer and his sister to a stroke just weeks apart, leaving him ‘devastated’
Dermot has bravely opened up on how hard it has been for him after his wife and sister died(Image: BBC)
Mrs Brown’s Boys star Dermot O’Neill has bravely opened up on how he has been left devastated after the deaths of his wife and sister. Their deaths took place within weeks of each other.
Dermot, who has played grandad Harold Brown in the BBC sitcom since 2011, revealed his sister passed away just weeks before his wife. Now, the star is trying to move on with his life − but admits he now feels “lonely”.
Dermot’s wife of 14 years, Patricia, affectionately known as Chickie, passed away at the age of 60 in the early hours of Monday June 1. She died at St Francis Hospice in Blanchardstown, Dublin, months after being diagnosed with cancer, with doctors only giving her just months to live after discovering several tumours in her stomach.
It has now emerged that Dermot’s 86-year-old sister, also named Patricia, had passed away in the same hospital just weeks prior following a stroke, according to the Express. “It has been difficult. To lose two people so close to me is hard,” he admitted in an interview with the Independent.
He added: “I feel so lonely. I feel the pain all over my body. I’m simply vegetating on the couch. I have the telly on and I don’t know what’s on it because I’m hurting inside. Really hurting.”
Reflecting on the moment he was told of his wife’s death, he revealed his daughter had phoned him shortly after 3am to break the news. He recalled: “I was devastated. It was surreal. I knew she was dying, but at the same time I was holding on to hope for a miracle.”
Dermot’s wife had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in January after she was taken a hospital in Spain for a routine procedure to have a hernia removed. She was left stunned as doctors couldn’t perform surgery after discovering multiple tumours in her stomach.
At the time she admitted she was floored when she heard her devastating diagnosis. “Dermot has been amazing, he’s old school − a real man’s man.
“Being 14 years younger than him, he never believed he would see me being sick. When the doctor told me it was stage four cancer, he said I had months to live, rather than years. I was choking when I got the news.
“They can’t reverse the cancer, only prolong my life,” she said. She added she had been offered treatment at a Spanish hospital but chose to “come back to Ireland” as she feared she would “never see [her] kids again” if she remained abroad.
She had been receiving chemotherapy at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital for several months before her passing.
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