Earlier this week we got an email from some friends at church with a prayer request from their sister, who sometimes comes to our church when she’s in town. Her employer, Natasha, was seriously injured in a skiing accident.
Later in the day we heard news reports that actress Natasha Richardson, wife of Liam Neeson, had been seriously injured in a skiing accident. It was a little surreal to realize that we had gotten a prayer request from Neeson and Richardson’s nanny, with Richardson simply identified as “Natasha.” (I’m not entirely sure that our friends, pious Irish Catholics, necessarily fully appreciate how famous their sister’s employers are, even their fellow countryman Neeson.)
That personal connection made the news last night of Richardson’s death more real to me than another news story about a tragedy involving famous people. Two young boys, 14 and 12, have lost a mother. Their nanny is a devout Catholic whom we’ve seen around our church. Neeson isn’t devout, though I’ve read that he’s been drawing closer to the Church. He seems to be impressed with the Church’s good works, and has talked about telling his sons about Jesus. He’s narrated CDs on “The Birth of Christ” and, this year for Lent, “The Way of the Cross” to benefit Catholic charities.
Last night we prayed our family rosary for their family. My children certainly know who Neeson is, both as Qui-Gon from The Phantom Menace and the voice of Aslan in the Narnia films. We’ve been praying for Amy Welborn and her sons, so they’re also aware of the recent death of Michael Dubriel. The possibility of losing a parent has become very real to them.
Their uncle, Suz’s brother, died only two years ago, not much older than I am. Their grandmother died the year before.
Recently, when someone asks me “How are you?” I’ve sometimes been tempted to reply, “Employed.” Right now, I’m tempted to reply, “Alive.”
P.S. I see I’ve written about at least one of Richardson’s films, in a review for the USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting. Other people have told me they know her from the remake of The Parent Trap.
May God have mercy on her soul…My prayers are with her and Liam Neeson, who, as you said, has been lately involved in some projects with Raymond Arroyo.
But I had a kind of weird experience, too: yesterday I happened to begin watching Return to Me again, in which a character played by an actress named Richardson dies in a car crash. I wasn’t able to go further into the viewing and went to the Internet where I read “Natasha Richardson dies…“. I was mesmerized by the strange coincidence, then I realized that the actress in the movie was Joely Richardson, Natasha’s sister.
I just received the “Praying the Way of the Cross” cd yesterday in the mail. I will keep their family in my prayers as I listen to the cd.
http://www.littlelambmusic.com/
God rest poor Natasha’s soul and comfort her family.
When Liam Neeson was filming Breakfast on Pluto in 2005 in my home county of Kilkenny, Ireland, he told a local priest there that his mother gave him a prayer book for his Confirmation and he brings it with him wherever he goes.
Liam Neeson also narrated a story on St. Francis Xavier.
May Natasha rest in peace.
May we pray for her family.