Pippa O’Connor opens up about losing her mum and gives sweet advice to anyone grieving

Sophie Collins

Pippa O’Connor has opened up about the moment she was told her mum had passed away

The well-known Irish entrepreneur spoke to Carl Mullan about how her whole body went into shock with the news.

She also touched on how navigating through grief affected her as a mother with her first-born, Ollie and gave some great advice to anyone going through the same thing.

Speaking openly, she said: “Myself and Brian were living in Meath at the time, Ollie, my eldest… he had just turned one so it was just after his first birthday.

“I often think I nearly forget Ollie’s first-second year. I always say to Brian, ‘thank God for you at the time because I don’t really remember it.’

“It was a weird hazy year because it was such a shock, it was something that we were not expecting, so to get a phone call like that your whole body just goes into this shock, autopilot mode, weird feeling,” she said while being interviewed on the Phone Truths podcast.

Pippa’s mum Louise passed away ten years ago and Pippa said she wishes she had more to remember her mum by. Now that people are videoing more and saving audio and photos galore, she said she would have loved to have a bank of content to look back on.

“I would’ve had snippets that I would’ve taken but not like every day now we are taking videos of each other.

“I definitely wish I had more of that. I have pictures from back in the day but pictures that would’ve belonged to family members that I printed.

“A few on my phone but things would’ve gotten wiped or things are missing,” she says.

Her advice to anyone listen is to document and print photos from special moments.

“Note to anyone listening: definitely do print things! Our grannies were great at putting things into albums so I was thinking recently I want to do an album for each of my boys.”

Despite time passing, O’Connor said she still has moment where the loss hurts her just as much as it did at the time of her mum’s passing.

Pippa said: “It’s weird I don’t think it [grief] does [go away], some months and years that pass are actually okay and now that it’s ten years it feels like it’s such a milestone, I feel as sad as I did back in year one, because you think God, that’s been a whole decade.

“It’s a weird feeling, it’s like the memory of that person is just getting further away so that’s sad.”

Even smelling her mum’s perfume in the air can send her back down memory lane to this day while the autumnal time of year reminds her of her great loss.

“You’d get a whiff of someone’s Chanel No. 5 and it catches me off guard. October the colours of the leaves, the orange and red, that just reminds me of that week.”

Giving others going through the same tragic ordeal of losing a parent, Pippa says don’t resist the grief and that it’s ok to move through time and still have moments of deep sadness.

“I think [my advice] is to feel the moment and to not try and resist it and not try and not go, ‘oh it’s been three years so I should be okay’.

“You might feel okay in year one but then you might feel back at square one in year ten, I think you just have to go with it and be kind to yourself.

“I think you always have to go easy on yourself and give yourself credit for what’s happened and I think depending on how someone has passed away as well, you know if it’s been a shock you may not have dealt with it in the first few years.”