Kildare comedian Aisling Bea pens emotionally powerful letter on father's tragic death

Irish comedian Aisling Bea has opened up about her father's suicide after almost 30 years of dealing with his tragic death, revealing that she wondered for years over why she was left out of a letter he wrote before he took his own life.

The Kildare Town native, who is one of the stars of Channel 4 comedy show 8 Out of 10 Cats, penned a powerful letter in the Guardian this weekend detailing the struggles she went through when coping with his death.

"When I was growing up, I idolised my father," she said.

"I thought his ghost followed me around the house. I had been told how he adored me, how I was funny, just like him. Because of our lovely Catholic upbringing, I secretly assumed that he would eventually come back, like our good friend Jesus.

"My mother, being the wonder woman that she is, never held his death against him. When she looked into his coffin, she felt she saw the face of the man she had married: his stress lines had gone, he seemed free of the sadness that had been dogging him of late. But it was still tough for her to talk about. She didn’t want to have to explain to a stranger in the middle of a party how he was not defined by his ending, but how loved he was, how cherished the charismatic, handsome vet in a small town had been. She didn’t want his whole person being judged.

"Once she had told us, I did not want to talk about him. Ever again. I now hated him. He had not been “taken” from us, he had left. His suicide felt like the opposite of parenting. Abandonment. Selfishness. Taking us for granted."

You can read the full letter here on the Guardian's website.