Ronan Keating
The singer has had to carry a coffin before
© dpa / AidanCrawley / Picture Alliance
Ronan Keating is likely to have a number of bad memories coming up at the moment. He buried his brother – something he had to do before his friend and “Boyzone” colleague Steven Gately.
“It’s a call no one wants to take about their loved ones,” a friend of Ronan Keating, 46, told Britain’s The Sun newspaper. But that’s exactly what happened to the ex-“Boyzone” singer. Last Sunday, July 16, 2023, his older brother Ciaran Keating died at the age of 50 in a serious car accident on a motorway in north-west Ireland. The musician dropped everything to be with his family.
On Thursday, July 20, Ronan paid his last respects to his brother, shouldering his coffin with six other men. A particularly heavy burden that the Irish musician had to carry and endure before. It was the coffin of “Boyzone” bandmate and friend Stephen Gately, who died suddenly on October 10, 2009 at the age of 33. Eleven years earlier, Keating had already had to bury his mother Marie – also much too early.
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With tears in their eyes and a look that can hardly seem more desperate and at the same time emptier, the “Boyzone” members (the band split up in 2019) Ronan Keating, Mikey Graham, 50, and Shane Lynch, 47, go the last way together with Stephen Gately. The singer died unexpectedly in his holiday home while on vacation in Mallorca. Later investigations revealed that he had pulmonary edema caused by an undiagnosed heart defect.
© Julien Behal / Picture Alliance
Keating still misses Steven Gately constantly
The horrific footage of Ronan Keating’s brother’s funeral recalls the scenes at Gately’s funeral on October 17, 2009 in his hometown of Dublin. Friends and colleagues carried his coffin. Ronan has spoken publicly about the death of his beloved friend in the years since, sharing fond memories and heartbreaking words on social media.
In 2020, eleven years after Stephen’s death, in an interview with British magazine New! it’s clear that he’s still having trouble coming to terms with it. “It’s awful and it’s still hard. I miss him all the time. He was such a beautiful shining light. It’s hard to believe he’s not here anymore,” Keating said.
His mother died of breast cancer at the age of 51
The singer was also very affected by the death of his mother. That’s why he’s still in tears today – like in the interview with “The Sun”. Marie Keating died of metastatic breast cancer in 1998 at the age of 51. Ronan was only in his early 20s at the time. His mother was only a year older than his brother Ciaran, who died in a car accident 25 years after her death. Ronan dedicated the song “This is Your Song” to him at the funeral, which he once wrote for his mother. A terrible cycle that is closing.
“It breaks my heart that she never got to meet her grandchildren”
Speaking to “The Sun” in 2022, Keating described how much it pains him that he cannot and could not share so much of his life with his mother: “It breaks my heart that she never got to know her grandchildren. I wonder what kind of conversation I would have with my mother today, about my children, about my life. There are so many things in the 24 years that I have experienced and done that I would like to share with my mother. ” Ronan Keating has three children, some of whom have already had offspring themselves.
Sources used: thesun.co.uk, picture-alliance.com