Norah: I almost sold it all when hubby died
In a deeply moving interview with Gay Byrne’s The Meaning of Life programme, she told of her struggle to cope with the death of her husband Richard Hannaford, in Oct 2011, at the age of 49, after a five-month battle with cancer. They have a teenage son, Dara.
One of the four hosts of RTÉ’s new Today show, Casey is finding her return to the small screen very therapeutic.
But the Dragon’s Den star, who is juggling her new TV role with fronting her Newstalk breakfast show, said she had been considering walking away from her magazine empire.
She said: “I was at the point where I was thinking of selling all the businesses.
“I took some time off over the summer and took some time with Dara and it coincided with various people asking me to do radio and television.
“I got a real kick out of it. If anyone had told me I would be getting up at four in the morning five days a week I would have laughed at them. But I just really am energised about it.”
The publishing magnate said it also helps her spend more time with her only child Dara.
She said: “Although I’m leaving very early in the morning, I spend every evening with Dara and we’re both going to bed at 9.30 every night. It just works for me at the moment.
“It’s been a tough year but I think we’ve got through it — myself and Dara, my boy — through a lot of hard work.
“It’s very therapeutic to keep busy and at the moment I’m keeping very busy.”
The publishing magnate, who had a brief first marriage which ended in divorce in her 20s, told how it was almost love at first sight when she met her late husband Richard Hannaford in London.
She said: “It was immediate. I met Richard at a dinner and I told a number of good friends afterwards that if I ever married again it was going to be to Richard Hannaford.
“He was such a charming, nice, intelligent person. I can’t describe it. There was a big connection between the two of us.”
The Dublin tycoon, who was in her 30s when she met the BBC health correspondent, said they embarked on a year of “very old-fashioned courtship”.
She said: “We got to know each other in ways that didn’t involve holding hands or kissing.
“When we did finally kiss, it was quite magical. It was the perfect foundation because within a month of two of us kissing we wanted to get married.”
Richard’s illness came as a bolt from the blue in May 2011, and within weeks, his body was under siege from multiple cancers.
She said: “It was a rollercoaster of bad news for us. We never had a break. Not once. As well as the liver cancer they discovered he had some in his spine. My vibrant, lovely, young husband, who was joking and partying with me [and] about four weeks later was in a wheelchair.”
In the interview, she heartrendingly reveals how her dying husband was too sick to write the letter he had intended for his 13-year-old son Dara.
She said: “He tried many times and the chemotherapy would make his brain fuzzy and he couldn’t write properly.”
But she said this “lovely man” in the shape of palliative care consultant Paul Gregan at the Blackrock Hospice helped her to break the news to her son that his father was about to die.
She said: “Myself and Dara went in to talk to him and the nurse and [Dr Gregan] asked Dara if he wanted to ask a question. Dara said straight away ‘Is my dad dying?’ He said ‘Yeah, he is.’
“He followed it with ‘When is he going to die?’ and he said ‘He is going to die in the next day or two’. I found out Richard was dying in that way.
“While I was with Dara consoling him, Paul Gregan said he now had to go and see Richard.
“He went to see Richard and Richard said ‘Did Dara ask you the hard question?’ Paul Gregan said ‘He did. I said you were going to die in the next few days.’
“And that’s how Richard found out he was going to die. That was so important because for the first time the three of us had an honest conversation and he was able to tell Dara all the things he had struggled to tell him.
“For one evening we got all of the hugs and the love and everything you want to say.
“He died really peacefully and I have to say, incredibly beautifully.”
* The Meaning of Life with Gay Byrne will be shown on RTÉ One on Sunday, Nov 4 at 10.30pm.
