Liam Neeson On ’60 Minutes’ — Reveals Last Conversation With Natasha Richardson Before Death
In the interview, which aired on 60 Minutes on Feb. 23, Liam, 61, spoke about the death of his late wife for the first time, whom died after she fell and hit her head while skiing in Quebec.
Liam remembered the conversation he had with her after her accident happened.
[hl_ndn videoid=”25646880″ videotitle=”Liam Neeson On Natasha’s Death” ]
“I spoke to her and she said, ‘Oh, darling. I’ve taken a tumble in the snow.’ That’s how she described it,” Liam, who married Natasha in 1994, told Anderson on 60 Minutes. He flew immediately to Montreal where he was shown X-rays.
“I was told she was brain dead. And seeing this X-ray it was, like, ‘Wow.’ You know.” he said. “But obviously she was on life support and stuff. And I went in to her and told her I loved her. Said,’Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this. You’ve banged your head. It’s– I don’t know if you can hear me, but that’s– this is what’s gone down. And we’re bringing ya back to New York. All your family and friends will come.’ And that was more or less it.”
Liam On Natasha: ‘We Made A Pact’ Before Her Death
He also told Anderson why he made the decision to “pull the plug.”
“She and I had made a pact,” he revealed. “If any of us got into a vegetative state that we’d pull the plug. You know? So when I saw her and saw all these tubes and stuff, that was my immediate thought. Was, “OK, these tubes have to go. She’s gone. But [she] donated three of her organs, so she’s keeping three people alive at the moment. Yeah. Her heart, her kidneys and her liver.”
However, the Taken actor chooses to remember her for how she lived rather than how she died.
“You sort of think back, well she always packed so much into every day that maybe she knew, maybe she wasn’t destined to be on this Earth for a long period of time,” he told Anderson. “I don’t know, I mourn for her, yeah. I visit her grave on a very regular basis.”
At the end of the day, he still doesn’t feel that she’s really gone.
“It was never real. It still kind of isn’t,” he said. “There’s — there’s periods now in our New York residence when I hear the door opening, especially the first couple of years, she would always drop the keys in the — on the table. Say, ‘Hello?’ So anytime I hear that door opening I still think I’m gonna hear her, you know. And, then, grief’s like, it hits you. It’s like a wave. You just get this profound feeling of instability. You feel like a three-legged table. Just suddenly you just — the Earth isn’t stable anymore. And then it passes and becomes more infrequent, but I still get it sometimes.”
How heartbreaking. Liam is so strong for speaking out this with such poise. We have the utmost respect for him during this tough time.
— Emily Longeretta
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