Gerry Ryan’s former partner Melanie has opened up about her grief on the 10th anniversary of his passing.
The diplomat and journalist, who is now based in South Africa, reveals that even a decade on, she still thinks about Gerry all the time.
“Ten years ago the love of my life died,” she told The Sun.
“For a precious few years, I shared a life with an exceptional man who created silent spaces for me and gave me soft landings when the world was brutal and tough. I loved him and he loved me. Then he died.”
She continued, “It has been 3,652 days since I found Gerry on the floor of our bedroom and on every one of those 3,652 days I have, for a moment, thought of him and ached with longing to see him again.
“Grief breaks something inside you. It takes enormous courage to eventually look at the broken pieces, gently collect them and put them together again.
“I have had to put myself and my life together again. Today, I’m indeed a very different person from the one I was ten years ago. I would like to think that I’m a better person.”
Gerry’s daughter Lottie also recently opened up about his passing on the 10th anniversary of his death.
Speaking to Brian Dowling on his podcast Death Becomes Him, Lottie opened up about the moment she learned of her father’s passing.
“My whole life changed in an instant,” she said. “I obviously wasn’t expecting the news when I got it, so I just felt like my whole world suddenly shattered. It was just horrific.”
She continued, “Thankfully I was with some of my family when I got the news, but the whole day is a big blur in my head, you know, in terms of what happened and the emotion around it.
“It was just awful. The worst moment you can think of.”
Lottie revealed that being in the public eye made their grief and that traumatic time even harder to deal with.
“I felt people were expecting me to always look upset or be in grief,” she said.
“I could be having a day where I woke up and maybe it wasn’t the first thing on my mind.
“I’d walk into a shop and there would be awful things written on a newspaper about him, and it would throw me back again. I found that very difficult for a long time.”
In honour of Gerry’s 10th anniversary RTE aired a special documentary surrounding his life and legacy.
The response online was overwhelming, as Twitter was inundated with people sharing their opinions on the show and their memories of the late presenter.