Tommy Tiernan has made a heartbreaking confession about his mother’s tragic death.
The comedian’s mum Helen sadly died by suicide back in 2010.
Speaking to the RTÉ Guide, Tommy said: “What I will say in terms of my Mam is that it is an ongoing fog and the nature of my relationship to my mother and the fact that she is dead means that the fog will never clear.”
“I will never be able to have clarity and certitude when it comes to my relationship with her. Never.
“There are no more discussions to be had, no more clambering towards some sort of reconciliation or understanding.”
“All you can do is learn to live with the fog and realise that’s just the nature of it. I will never know really who my mother was or what she was like. That’s it really.
“I can’t say any more. I can talk about it but how do you describe a fog?”
Tommy opened up about his mother’s suicide for the first time back in January during an interview with Ray D’Arcy on RTÉ Radio 1.
The comedian said: “So, my mam basically took her own life in 2010 and what I think happened, definitely not with all suicides, but with some people… I think my mam, she obviously found things incredibly difficult.
“But she also lived at a strange distance from us, even though she was in the same house as us.
“There was a part of her that wasn’t comfortable or couldn’t cope with or didn’t want or wasn’t able for maybe – a better way of saying it – the kind of intimacy of family life.”
“But she was a woman at the same time who was hugely part of setting up the first Meath’s Women’s Refuge, so herself and her friend would’ve been part of a small collective of women in Navan in the 80s who decided lets set up a refuge for battered wives.
“There could be children all around the housing estate that we grew up in saying ‘your mam really looked after me’. ‘Anytime my mam was sick, your mam looked after me’ and ‘I loved your mam’ and all that kind of stuff…
“But when it got to her own house she just couldn’t share in the same way. She couldn’t cope,” he explained.
“When someone who has lived like that dies the way mam did, part of it isn’t a surprise. Sometimes it’s still the same. The relationship goes on.”
“I still have a relationship with my mother that’s changed since she died and in a way, over the past number of years, I’m learning to love her more.
“She would always be on my mind in some kind of way. I would always be in dialogue with her. I would always be thinking about the strange, odd life that she had,” Tommy continued.
“So, it’s a process. Just because someone dies, doesn’t mean the relationship stops. It’s still there, it is still going on.”
Tommy went on to say he didn’t know if she ever sought professional help for her issues, before adding: “I love her more than I did when she was alive.”
“I’ve more empathy towards her. But there’s still sharks in that particular pool, there’s danger. So, it is a gradual thing. It goes on and on.”
