One year on from the tragic death of her son, Cory Monteith’s mum Ann McGregor, has opened up about the sense of loss she felt after losing her son at the young age of just 31.
Ann said in a television interview with ABC’s Good Morning America that she hadn’t been able to look at photos of her son since the death because it “hurt too much” and had not watched Glee, the television show that shot him to fame, since his death. The first time that she had been able to look at his picture was three days prior, which she viewed as progress.
“The loss is horrendous,” Ann told the show. “Until three days ago I couldn’t look at a picture of Cory… So there’s been progress.”
Cory died in July last year, prematurely at the age of just 31 in a Vancouver hotel room from “mixed drug toxicity, involving heroin and alcohol”.
Ann also spoke about how substance abuse had been an issue throughout the Glee actor’s life: “[When] Cory was 15, he did a code blue, and I think that was the turning point,” she told the show. “He had a lot of emotional things he was trying to figure out – alot of it was he really wanted a relationship with his father. I think when a child gets invalidated they keep reaching even harder. They want to find out why.”
Cory’s strained relationship with his father Joe Monteith had also been an issue throughout his life. Joe was estranged from his son at the time of his death, but spoke out recently to ET Canada about how he regretted this and that he was not there at the private funeral of his son.
Tragically, Ann felt that deep down she always knew there was a risk that something like that overdose that killed him could happen. She said that after the incident as a teenager she decided: “I really want to know him, because I’m not going to have him for my entire life”.
Ann also said that she had seen her son just two days before his death and that he was planning to buy an apartment in Canada and to get away from the pressure of the Hollywood limelight, so it was especially tragic that he never got to make these plans a reality.
