‘Mum could never get over death of beloved daughter’
MARIAN Finucane never got over the heartbreak caused by her daughter’s death, her son has said.
The veteran RTÉ broadcaster was found dead by her husband, John Clarke, at their Co. Kildare home just over a year ago, on January 2, 2020. Marian, who broke societal taboos by discussing topics such as divorce, homosexuality, and contraception on air during her long career, died in her sleep from pneumonia at the age of 69.
Her son, Jack Clarke, revealed how he and his wife Jennifer named their new baby daughter after his sister, Sinéad, who died aged eight in 1990 due to leukaemia.
He did so in a ‘nice tribute’ to both his late sister and mother. Jack explained that a different name was going to be chosen if Marian had not passed away, because Sinéad would have been ‘too close to the bone’ for his mother if she was still alive.
He added that Sinéad’s birth five weeks after Marian’s death was ‘bittersweet’.
‘We didn’t know if we were going to have a boy or a girl, and given my sister, Sinéad, had died when she was eight years old, I think it would have been far too close to the bone to name a daughter Sinéad if Mam was around,’ Jack told RTÉ’s Liveline – a show his mother used to present.
He continued: ‘But when she died, my wife Jennifer and I talked about it and we thought it was a nice tribute to both my sister and my mum that their legacy be carried on in the name.’
His father John, who already had children when he met Mar ian, has numerous grandchildren, but Sinéad would have been his mother’s first and she was so ‘looking forward to being a grandparent’. Marian is now buried with her daughter Sinéad, as the broadcaster had requested.
Jack added: ‘I think for any parent to lose a child is the worst thing that can happen to you.’
He also said his mother carried the death of her young daughter ‘very close to her’ all her life and that it was never a topic that could be brought up ‘without a few tears being shed’.
Marian ‘couldn’t hold back the tears so she always tried to avoid that topic of discussion’, he said.
Jack added that his parents had a ‘great relationship’, saying: ‘They’re very lucky in the sense they met each other.’