Ryan O’Neal Speaks Out For The First Time After Farrah’s Death

Posted on July 20, 2009

Ryan O’Neal is opening up about Farrah Fawcett’s death June 25 in a new television interview with Today’s Meredith Vieira. Read more on what Ryan had to say below.

In the interview with Viera, Ryan O’Neal, 68, talks about his final moments with Farrah who died at the age of 62 with anal cancer.

“[Doctors] thought that she would live just another couple of hours, and she lived a couple of days,” O’Neal says of his longtime love, who spent her last days at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. “So I had a bed put in the room for me. And I just lay by her side. She wouldn’t — move on. She wouldn’t pass.”

In her dying moments, “[Farrah] just looked at us with a slight smile,” O’Neal says, “and then all the machines flat lined. She was gone.”

Ryan was able to be by his longtime love’s side at the time of her death, but their son Redmond, 24, was in jail for felony drug possession. He was able to attend her funeral, serving as a pall bearer, but did not get to say goodbye in person at the hospital.

Of Redmond’s last phone call with his mother, O’Neal tells Vieira: “I think it was about regret. And the horror of not being able to see her again, and the promise of a good life — one she would be proud of. He has a wonderful plan in mind to restore order in his life. And he will, with my help.”

In the weeks after Farrah’s death, O’Neal says he has remained upbeat and is very touched by the outpouring of support from Fawcett’s fans.

“[In her final moments], I said I’d see her soon, and I see her every day. I write to her in my journal,” O’Neal tells Vieira. “Redmond says it’s harder to grieve, but I told him to be patient. And when he got out, we’d grieve together.”

“I’m using what she taught me to survive, to go on. I have launched into this massive job of answering the mail that has come in for her over the last few weeks,” he says. “Hundreds and hundreds of letters of pain and sorrow and hope. I’m answering every one of them. That’s my life now.”

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