Sir Bob Geldof must have endured years of dread in the years leading up to his daughter Peaches’ death from a heroin overdose in 2014.
The musician spoke about the awful loss of Peaches at just 25 from the same addiction that took the life of her mother Paula Yates on Ireland’s RTE Radio.
“Part of me kind of half-expected it with Peaches, to be honest with you – the way she was carrying on, there’s nothing you can do about it,” the 64-year-old said.
“This thing of being forever 25, in my head, that’s unbearable, simply because of that cliché – you are not supposed to see your children die.
“But she is the one who is with me every second of the day, and she is the one who bangs into my consciousness, especially in any down moment… where I am not doing something. She’s very present.”
Peaches Geldof was found dead at home in 2014 with one of her two young children in the house. Her death was ruled a drug overdose.
Geldof said he decided to propose to his partner of 20 years, Jeanne Marine, the day after Peaches’ funeral to “let some air into the room” as the family worked through their “suffocating grief”.
“You just push it (grief) to the side until it forces its way into your foreconscious again, and then you have to move it and place it back to this deep dark dungeon. I thought, ‘I have to do something’.
“I had already planned to ask her to marry me on her birthday. And then, because of Peaches, I thought it would be entirely appropriate.”
“Time does not heal, it accommodates. But it is not accommodating this.”
