Lottie Ryan has opened up about the “horrific” moment she found out her father Gerry had passed away.
The broadcaster died suddenly on April 30, 2010 at the age of 53, after he suffered a heart attack.
Speaking on Brian Dowling’s podcast Death Becomes Him, Lottie recalled the moment she found out her beloved dad had died.
“I think that’s the hardest part of it for me, that moment in my head, I probably still haven’t fully become comfortable with it because it was just… my whole life changed in an instant,” she said.
“I obviously wasn’t expecting the news when I got the news, so I just felt like my whole world suddenly shattered.”
“And when I think back about me those ten years ago, I get quite upset because I feel so sorry for what that person is about to go through, and it was just horrific.”
“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 said.
“I’m the eldest of five, I was 23, so there were very young kids in my house and it was just a very, very difficult time.”
During her chat with Brian, Lottie said she’s always been very guarded when speaking about her dad, who passed away ten years ago this week.
Lottie said: “I’m very guarded, I’m guarded of how interested people are in him, I’m very aware of it, I’m so hyper protective of my family, and I think I’m very guarded of how special he is and was to us, And I think I’m just very protective of him and his memory.”
“I think maybe it’s because I’m so aware of how interested people are in him that I’m guarded when I’m talking about him.”
“But I think it’s important that I learn to get over that for myself, so when I’m reminded of him nowadays, it just makes me happy.”
“Whereas before I would have immediately started sweating, and being ‘like oh my god I’ve to be so careful about what I say’, and ‘are they waiting for me to say something that I’m not supposed to say?'”
“But I’m getting better. But it’s by no means a straight road, like, you just have to take it how it comes and maybe I’ll always be learning how to deal with it, I don’t know.”
Speaking about dealing with grief in the public eye, Lottie admitted she found it extremely difficult.
“It was very difficult. It was very difficult because I felt for a long time very much like… I’ve never spoken about this so it’s hard to put it into words…”
“When I would go out, I would know when people were staring at us as a family because I was with my dad. But now suddenly, people were staring at us and he wasn’t there.. and I felt people were expecting me to always look upset or be in grief,” Lottie said.
“And I could be having a day where I woke up and maybe it wasn’t the first thing on my mind, and I went out and I was happy and laughing. And people would be staring at you and pointing at you, it was very much like that in the beginning…
“And I kind of felt like, not that I was betraying him, but like it was a very difficult emotional rollercoaster to kind of go through when you felt like that, like people were expecting to see you upset all the time.”
“Or if I was having a good day and 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.
“But I feel like I’m in control of it finally, I feel like I embrace it, and I’m comfortable with it now. I was very very closed for a long time because of it,” she explained.
Check out our exclusive interview with Too Hot To Handle star Nicole O’Brien on our brand new weekly show ‘Goss Chats’, which is in association with top Irish aesthetic clinic Hause of JeJuve.
The Cork native opens up about the “indescribable tension” in the villa, her love for bad boys, and what the public reaction has been like since the Netflix show launched:
