Kiera Dignam: 'I was the one that was in denial and trying to avoid reality'

Irish Daily Mirror

25-05-2025

Christy Dignam's daughter felt like a 'double-decker bus was rammed' into her face the day she realised her father was going to die.
The Aslan frontman passed away aged 63 on June 13, 2023 after a lengthy battle with cancer. But his only child Kiera Dignam said his loss is still so raw for her and the details of his death were traumatic.
Christy was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer called amyloidosis in 2013 and had been in palliative care for a few months before his death.
Despite this, Kiera said she was in denial and didn't fully believe her father was dying until a nurse spelt it out.
The weekend before his death, the musician had a bad fall at home, and it was then that the family realised he might not have long left.
Speaking for the first time on The Grief Pod with Venetia Quick, the Dubliner has recalled the singer's final days.
Kiera said: 'Sunday morning my mum rang me, she was up all night with him.
'We went down, we knew this wasn't good.
'I remember Darren [my husband] saying 'When we go down here if he is sick enough that he needs to go into the hospice I'm going to suggest that.'
'But he did not want to die in a hospice or a hospital, so I was saying 'Darren I have to have my dad's back on that. He doesn't want to die in a hospice, I'm not letting him go back'.
'So Darren said, 'Christy, do you think maybe we should go back to the hospice?' So I looked at my dad like, 'We've got this'. And he said, 'Yeah, maybe'.
'I said, 'Are you winding me up? I was about to fight your corner here'.
'But when he said yes, I realised he was defeated then. He was sitting there in the bed, you could see he was in a lot of pain trying to take breaths.' A hospice nurse then called to the home and suggested she use 'a machine' to alleviate his pain.
Also known as 'the pump' this is a syringe driver, a battery-operated device, that administers medication continuously via subcutaneous infusion and is commonly used in end-of-life care.
Kiera added: 'I say [to her] 'When you say machine, are you saying you're putting my dad on a pump?'
'She said, 'Yes' and I said, 'Hang on a minute, as far as I'm concerned anybody I've ever heard been on the pump that's like days, hours at max.
'This is when I started realising, now hang on a minute. You're trying to kill my dad, he's fine, he just fell.
'She took my hand and pulled me in and said 'Kiera your dad is actively dying'.
'And I swear to God she may as well have gotten a double-decker and rammed it straight into my face.
'I remember it now and I feel sick. I thought my legs were going to buckle. I was standing in the hall and I remember holding on to the bannisters because I was like, 'What am I going to tell my mum and Darren?'
'At the time they knew, I was the one that was in denial and trying to avoid reality.
'In hindsight, I thought he fell and that's essentially why he died but he fell because he was dying.'
The family then rallied around to get Kiera's son Cian, 21, who was at a festival in the UK, home.
Two days later, Christy passed away surrounded by his family, including grandchildren Cian and Ava. Kiera said his death was traumatic but there was another layer to her grief because he was a public figure.
There had also been numerous fake reports of him dying over the years, even before the family announced in January 2023 he was going into palliative care.
Kiera recalled: 'It was very, very hard and now it's all in the past it's almost like PTSD because when you are dealing with death it can be very traumatic and I was also taking that aspect on, I can't explain how hard it was. I remember Darren saying, 'Maybe you should work out a statement for when he dies' and I said, 'I don't want to think about that'.
'But he said, 'You need to be realistic, this is something you're going to have to do and when it happens you're not going to be in the headspace to do that.
'So I had to sit and work out how I'm wording his death announcement and he's sitting beside me. That's traumatic, traumatic probably isn't even the word for that.'
After Christy's death, this statement was needed much quicker than Kiera had hoped, as the word got out an hour after he died. She said: 'When he did pass away we were sitting with him for a few minutes and we had his music playing, music that he loved.
'We leave the room and I'm standing in the kitchen like what just happened? And Darren said, 'Kiera you're probably going to have to get that statement'.
'I remember taking my phone out, it was in my notes, copying and pasting it and writing out the time and date that he died.
'In an ideal world, he died Tuesday, I was hoping I could announce he died Friday, have the funeral on Saturday and we don't have to deal with the public frenzy.'
However, Christy died at 4.03pm and at 5.15pm the word was out.
Kiera added: 'We were all in the house, how has this happened? But there were nurses and staff from the hospital and hospices coming back and forth and it got to a receptionist that got to a friend of a friend kind of thing.
'He was only an hour gone and I'm having to share this statement, which I was not prepared for.'