‘I was relieved my dad died peacefully of a heart attack in his sleep after enduring years of torture from cancer’

MAURA DERRANE REVEALS HER FATHER’S LONG BATTLE AFTER OP

TV star Maura Derrane admits she was relieved her father died peacefully in his sleep from a heart attack after suffering from the effect of operations to treat cancer for years.

Maura (53), who co-presents with Daithi O Se on The Today Show on RTÉ, grew up on Inis Mór on the Aran Islands.

She was the eldest of four girls born to farmer Mattie and homemaker Bridgie, and was brought back to her humble beginnings by presenter Brendan Courtney for RTÉ’s Keys To My Life.

“This house was totally different back then,” she explains, on visiting the homestead she grew up in.

“It was a single-storey house, it didn’t have electricity. It was very basic. There was just stone floors, 1970s lino. There was just a sitting room there, my grandmother slept out in that room.

“Out in the back you’d have a small little scullery rather than a kitchen. It was very basic.

“I have memories of candles lit, gaslights, big fires. Even now when I come back here, if there’s anything on your mind or if you’re stressed or whatever, this is where I want to come for the feeling of being grounded. It’s the kind of cornerstone of our life, really.”

CATTLE

The family was pretty much self-sufficient.

“I don’t think we had a fridge in the beginning,” Maura recalls.

“Our cow was out there in the garden, and the milk was brought in and we used to drink it. I remember the first time that I tasted shop milk, I thought it was really sweet, pasteurised milk. Because we literally used to drink straight from the cow. I used to milk the cow, we all used to milk the cow.

“We grew everything. We were kind of self-sufficient. We had to cycle three miles over the road and bring water from the well. There was no boy. Normally if you had a lad in the family, they’d do a lot of that work with the dad. But with four girls, we had no choice, we had to do it.”

In the mid-1970s the family’s idyllic life was torn apart after Mattie was diagnosed with cancer.

“He had esophageal cancer in his 40s,” explains Maura.

“We were all under six, all of us. We were building this house at the time. I remember the day it happened very well. He was bent over and really roaring with pain. It came on him very suddenly. He was rushed out on the lifeboat. Then he’d kind of disappear out of our lives for a month at a time, and it was quite amazing that he survived that.

“Half his stomach was removed; his spleen was removed. Most of his esophagus was removed, so his life changed that day, and our lives changed forever, because after that he wasn’t the same person

“He got very depressed. It was very hard for him. He could never work at the pace he worked again, he couldn’t handle it.

“We used to have to mince all his food, and every time he ate he was in excruciating pain for hours. I remember him sitting like this, bent over. It was tough.”

Maura admits the family did not fully realise the torture her dad went through.

“And he lived until he was 79 years old. He died in his sleep of a heart attack. It’s a nice way to go,” she reflects.

“The night he passed away was New Year’s Eve 2004, going into 2005. I was in Dungarvan living at the time. Barbara, my sister, was here. My mother was in Galway, about to have a procedure the next day.

“This is so weird. The dog started howling at six o’clock in the morning. Then Barbara got up, said ‘are you OK’, brought her wherever and then went back to bed. Then Barbara got up around eight and Dad was lying on his side, and he had passed away

“It was strange, because the little dog howling at six o’clock. The time of death was put at 6am. Isn’t that strange? She was very close to Dad.”

Maura is married to former Fine Gael TD John Deasy, and the couple have a son, Cal (10).

“I was getting married in May, so it was literally three or four months before, and that day was kind of a bittersweet day,” she says of her wedding, just months after her father’ death.

PEACE

“But I was happy that Dad went the way he went. I was, because how much can anyone suffer? I would have hated if dad had a long prolonged illness at the end, because he suffered a lot in his life. That brings me great peace, and all of us great peace.

“I was happy that he went like that. I didn’t want to see my father in a hospital bed again, never. You know what I miss? I miss that he never saw Cal. I do.”

Sadly, Maura’s younger sister Rita also died last year from cancer and the programme, which was filmed before her death, is dedicated to her.

Maura moved to Galway City in the late 1980s and got a job in marketing.

A chance meeting with now deceased RTÉ Western Correspondent Jim Fahy led to a job offer working behind the camera. In 1996, Maura joined TG4 as a TV reporter, then TV3 as a reporter and presenter, before moving to RTÉ to host afternoon programmes, including The Today Show.

She met Waterford man

John at a Fine Gael drinks reception, and the couple moved initially to Dungarvan, and now live in Sandymount in Dublin.

The arrival of the couple’s son was momentous.

“It was now or never,” she admits. “We were never really baby people; does that make sense? I don’t want to sound cold by saying this, but I never had that urge as a woman. Like I never looked at babies in prams when I was 20, 30, like ‘I’d love a baby’.

“I never had that, and really everything changed the minute I had him.” Maura tells Brendan Courtney about her traumatic experience in childbirth. “I had placenta previa, which is a low lying placenta – it basically means

CO-HOST: Maura with Today Show co-host Daithi O Se you are more in danger than somebody else of having a bleed,” she says.

PANIC

“I was in the hospital and I was standing in the corridor on the phone to my sister, and the next thing I just felt something and I went very calmly, ‘I think I’m having a bleed now, I’m going to go’. I just shouted ‘nurse’, and there was blood everywhere, everywhere.

“Obviously it was complete panic, but I still was very calm and they were on me in two seconds. They were over and checking if the baby was still alive, trying to get a heartbeat.

“They were knocking me out, they were giving me anaesthetic, and somebody was putting a tube down my throat, that’s it,” she remembers.“Next thing I woke up, and I couldn’t comprehend anything, and John came up and told me it was a boy.

“I didn’t see him for 48 hours, I was so ill.” She confirms she could have died. “Yes. I could have,” she admits.

“The minute I got him home, John did everything, like feeds, everything. I didn’t even attempt to feed him myself, because I just couldn’t. I couldn’t just sit up. I don’t think I even processed this. I’m the type to move on and not think about stuff that happens, that’s my way.”

■ Keys To My Life is on RTÉ One tonight at 7.30pm.