Bono reveals heartbreaking last moments with dad
Bono has given a heartbreaking insight to his late father’s dying moments in a new book launched by the Irish Hospice Foundation, Sons+Fathers.
“I was lying on a mattress in Beaumont Hospital beside his bed, having flown home after a U2 show in London,” he revealed.
“My father woke up in the middle of the night, anxious and whispering. His Parkinson’s disease had taken some of his beautiful tenor away.
“The whispers were percussive, animated. I called the nurse and we both leaned in to try and make out what he was saying.
“Through the strained rasping, loud and clear, burst ‘F**k off!’ Then, ‘I want to go home. I need to go home.’ And he did. I’m looking forward to seeing him there.”
The U2 frontmanalso revealed that the pair had never seen eye-to-eye after his mother passed away while he was just a child.
“It was a house of three males: my brother Norman (Nobby), me, and my grief-stricken father, who had now, to our sulking teenage eyes, become an unwanted figure of authority – a sergeant major, dishing out to my brother and me the tasks that my mother used to perform,” he wrote.
“My brother did good. I did bad. I was unaware of the hormonal drag that was going to pit me against this great man and turn me into a little b*****.”
Despite that, he credits him as the source of his creativity and believes his father’s take on religion taught him one of the most important lessons of his life.
“He read Shakespeare, he painted, he sang, he danced. And when he wasn’t arguing with men, he made women laugh.
“I had taken to drawing him as he slept to try and stay awake, but also to meditate on what a special, talented man I had been given for a father. All my creativity comes from him.”
It was one of these drawings that inspired the entire book CEO of The Irish Hospice Foundation Sharon Foley revealed: “Bono planted the seed for this book with his generous gift of the drawing he made of his father when he was dying.
“He asked if they could be used to raise money for The Irish Hospice Foundation, so we decided on a book”.
The book also features contributions from Bill Clinton, Paul McCartney and Daniel Day Lewis.
