Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this... You’ve banged your head.
Neeson shares anguish of wife’s death
FIVE YEARS after Natasha Richardson died following a freak skiing accident, Liam Neeson has recounted in heartbreaking detail what he told his wife as she lay hospitalized and on life-support.
“I went in to her and I told her I loved her. I said, ‘Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this; you’ve banged your head,’ ” Neeson said in an emotional interview with Anderson Cooper for “60 Minutes.”
After she had been declared brain-dead by doctors in Montreal, Richardson, 45, was flown back to New York — her adopted hometown — so loved ones could have a chance to say goodbye. db The Th way h her t tragic i l last t days were handled had been her wish.
“She and I had made a pact, if any of us got into a vegetative state, that we’d pull the plug . . . that was my immediate thought. . . . ‘Okay, these tubes have to go. She’s gone.’ ”
His voice composed but barely louder than a whisper, Neeson, 61, said that it seems like Richardson’s death “was never real — it still kind of isn’t.” He admitted that sometimes when the front door opens he feels like his wife will come walking through it.
“There’s periods now in our New York residence when I hear the door opening, especially the first couple of years . . . anytime I hear that door opening, I still think I’m going to hear her,” he told Cooper for the spot, which will air on Sunday.
Richardson had fallen on the beginner slope at Quebec’s Mont Tremblant resort on March 16, 2009. At first, the actress, who was skiing with the couple’s two young sons, laughed off the tumble, despite hitting the back of her head on hard-packed snow.
She was not wearing a helmet, but felt well enough at first to decline medical assistance. Two hours later, as a headache became significantly more painful, an ambulance was called. Richardson was rushed the hospital, where doctors discovered blood had accumulated between her brain and skull in what is called an epidural hematoma.
Not long afterward, she was declared brain-dead. It was then that Neeson had her flown back to New York. Two days later she was gone. Neeson said he takes some consolation from the fact that his late wife — who was born into movie royalty as the daughter of director Tony Richardson and actress Vanessa Redgrave — donated her heart, kidneys and liver, giving a second chance at life to three recipients.
“I think she would be very thrilled and pleased by that,” Neeson said.
Neeson and Richardson met when they starred in the 1993 revival of “Anna Christie.” In the years since her death, Neeson has enjoyed a career resurgence as an action movie lead — his latest tough-guy flick, “Non-Stop,” opens next week. But even renewed success hasn’t filled the void left by Richardson’s loss.
“It’s like a wave. You just get this profound feeling of instability,” he said. “The Earth isn’t stable anymore, and then it passes and it becomes more infrequent, but I still get it sometimes.”