Pippa O’Connor has opened up about her mother’s untimely death.
The author and businesswoman tragically lost her mother, Louise, to a sudden heart attack, aged just 61.
Speaking to her friend Brian Dowling on his new podcast Death Becomes Him, Pippa recounted the moment she found out that her mother had passed away.
“My uncle rang Brian. I was in the shower, and we hadn’t heard from her the day before, and we would always be in touch, she would ring me and my sister like 20 times a day,” she said.
“So we hadn’t heard from her for like a day, and I was thinking ‘that’s a bit weird. But my sister had said to me that my mum said she didn’t feel well the previous day and that she had a flu or something and had gone to bed. So it wasn’t that big of a deal.”
“But then when she wasn’t responding, I suppose we started to get a bit concerned.”
Pippa also revealed that she wrestled with guilt following her beloved mum’s passing, because she was “at home on her own” when it happened.
“It’s the weirdest feeling because I had this pit in my stomach that morning in October, I just knew something was wrong,” she admitted.
“I was in the shower and Brian came in and he just looked at me, he didn’t even say anything and I just knew.”
The mum-of-two also opened up about hiding her grief from her eldest son, Ollie, who was a baby at the time.
“We were living in Meath at the time and Ollie was one and I remember just thinking; ‘I don’t want him to see me upset’ because a one-year-old is so in-tune with your feelings.”
“But I just remember thinking ‘I don’t want Ollie to see me’, because I didn’t want him to be upset seeing me upset,” she continued.
Pippa also admitted that she doesn’t like to talk about her mother’s death because it still makes her very emotional.
“I saw my mum in the morgue. That was probably the most horrendous moment of my life. That’s really, really, awakening.
“I think when something like that happens you, you can go on with life and continue to hold this big chip on your shoulder, and be like: ‘Why me? Why my mum? They didn’t deserve it, they had so much life to give.’ You could carry that with you, and that could affect everything you do.”