Catherine O’Hara’s brother Michael P. O’Hara recalled dreaming about his sister — and seemingly saying “goodbye” to the beloved actor — days before her death.
“I was hugging her, which was really beautiful,” Michael recalled to his “Dreams of Our Loved Ones” podcast listeners on Sunday, April 5, when opening up about a “very unexpected and very, very sad” death in his family.
“I guess it was sort of a goodbye,” he added of the dream, which he said occurred “a few days before” Catherine died. (NewsPlop
confirmed on January 30 that the Home Alone actress died at the age of 71.)Michael said that because the Schitt’s Creek alum “wasn’t talking much in the end,” his vivid dream was even more important as he grieves his sister’s death.
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“She didn’t really want to talk on the phone,” he explained of his sister’s final days. “And she didn’t live close by, she’s in Los Angeles.”
Michael — one of seven O’Hara children — shared that following the Best in Show actress’ death he has continued to see her in his dreams.
“I’ve had a lovely dream where I was visiting her, and she was in a new house and it was being renovated and she was really busy choosing furniture and couches,” he revealed. “And she said, ‘You can sleep here anytime, Michael. You can come over and stay anytime.’”
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Michael noted that the sweet interaction reminded him of when Catherine was on Canada’s Second City Television while he was “apprenticing” at the Windsor Arms Hotel.
“I would go over and sleep over at her place some nights because she had an extra bedroom,” he said of that time. “Yeah, pretty cool. But yeah, it was beautiful. She was just so happy and very busy in the other world that she’s now in, but yeah, it’s beautiful.”
Michael is grateful for his dreams of Catherine, telling his listeners that seeing “deceased loved ones” helps remind him that “we’re all interconnected.”
“And the love, you know, continues no matter what. They’re always with us,” he concluded.
Michael’s memory of Catherine’s dream visits come less than three months after the comedian’s death. Catherine’s immediate cause of death was listed as a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lungs, with rectal cancer as the underlying cause, according to the L.A. County Department of Public Health report released in early February.
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“Words seem inadequate to express the loss I feel today. I had the honor of knowing and working with the great Catherine O’Hara for over fifty years,” Catherine’s longtime friend and scene partner Eugene Levy told Us in a statement after her death. “From our beginnings on the Second City stage, to SCTV, to the movies we did with Chris Guest, to our six glorious years on Schitt’s Creek, I cherished our working relationship, but most of all our friendship.”
Levy, 79, was among the many stars who shared tributes to Catherine after her sudden death. His son, Dan Levy, who cocreated Schitt’s Creek and played Catherine’s son on the sitcom addressed her passing earlier this month after releasing an initial statement in January.
“Listen, it’s like a collective loss, I think,” Dan, 42, said during the March 31 episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “She was the greatest. She’s irreplaceable. I think the great comfort for me has just been to see how loved she was. The outpouring … everyone felt like they kind of knew her.”