MRS Brown’s Boys star Dermot O’Neill is in mourning after the death of his beloved wife Patricia.
Patricia ‘Chickie’ Maguire, 60, died in the early hours of Monday morning at St Francis Hospice Blanchardstown after only being given months to live.
Dermot told The Irish Sun: “Chickie left us about half three in the morning. We are absolutely devastated. I am going to miss her so much.”
The Dunnes Stores worker had been receiving chemotherapy at Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital after she got her shock diagnosis in a Spanish hospital, where she travelled in January to have a hernia removed.
However Spanish surgeons told her they were unable to operate as they found several tumours in her stomach.
Chickie previously told The Irish Sun: “If I hadn’t have gone abroad, I’d never have known I had stage 4 cancer. Once they found it, the doctors wanted to send me to another hospital in Spain. They said I might not see my kids for a while. I told them I wanted to come back to Ireland, or I’d never see my kids again.”
The mum-of-seven said one of the hardest things was breaking the news to her sons — Salvador, 39, and Evan, 24 — from her hospital bed at Beaumont.
Chickie told us: “Dermot put his hand on my knee and both boys held each of my hands, and we all hugged and cried.”
Chickie had heartbreakingly told of her wish to spend another Christmas with her family, adding: “I’ve a little granddaughter, Ellie, who is three, and my dream is to make it to Christmas Day and give her a kiss, so she can remember that kiss.”
Brave Chickie has also paid tribute to the staff at Beaumont Hospital for the care she received, and to her bosses at Dunnes Stores in Portmarnock.
Until very recently, she had worked there on the tills after setting up the branch’s click and collect service with other colleagues.
Chickie previously nursed husband Dermot through his own cancer battle.
She said: “Dermot has been amazing. He’s old school, a real man’s man.
“Being 14 years younger than him, he never believed he would see me being sick. When the doctor told me it was stage four cancer, he said I had months to live, rather than years, I was choking when I got the news. They can’t reverse the cancer, only prolong my life.”
Dermot was given the all-clear in 2020 after undergoing treatment.
