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Madison Burgess
Liam Neeson had a heartbreaking pact with his late wife Natasha Richardson, before her tragic death in 2009.
The Parent Trap actress suddenly died in a skiing accident at the age of 45 while in Quebec, Canada. She and Liam, 73, had been married for 15 years and had two sons, Micheál, now 30, and Daniel, now 28, together.
While on a family holiday, Natasha had been taking a beginners ski lesson at the Mont Tremblant resort when she fell on the slope and hit her head.
She initially laughed it off and thought nothing of the fall, even picking up the phone to call her husband from her hotel room to let him know what had happened.
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“I spoke to her, and she said, 'Oh, darling. I've taken a tumble in the snow.' That's how she described it," Liam recalled in an interview on 60 Minutes in February 2014.
But within hours, her condition had worsened as the fall had caused a fatal bleed on her brain, and she died just two days later. By the time Liam had flown over to be by her side, she was tragically already brain dead and on life support.
He told Loaded Magazine in 2014 that he and Natasha had a pact, which led him to make the difficult decision to turn off her life support.
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The actor told the publication: "I went in to her and I just told her I loved her. I said, ‘Sweetie, you’re not coming back from this’.
"She and I had made a pact. If any of us got into a vegetative state we’d pull the plug.
“So when I saw her and saw all these tubes and stuff that was my immediate thought, ‘OK, these tubes have to go. She’s gone’."
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Natasha was then transferred to America's Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, where her loved ones gathered to say their final goodbyes.
Liam has been open about his grief since the awful accident and has previously explained how he keeps Natasha’s memory alive.
In a 2020 interview with Inquirer.net, he said: "I speak to her everyday at her grave which is about a mile and half down the road.
“I go down there quite often, so I do speak to her as if she’s here. Not that she answers me.”
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He added: "I also speak to a couple of deceased actors that I knew years ago back in Ireland. Is that religious? I don’t know. I was brought up Catholic.
"But I certainly question death and life and is there an afterlife a lot more, not least because I’m now 68 years of age. I’m way past middle age."
If you have experienced a bereavement and would like to speak with someone in confidence contact Cruse Bereavement Care via their national helpline on 0808 808 1677