On a recent podcast, Ms Clarke revealed that she had never seen children as a part of her 40-year relationship with her husband, the late Pogues singer. She also told how she had spent much of that time anticipating the death of her husband, as everyone constantly warned her that he did not have long to live.
MacGowan ultimately died on November 30, at the age of 65.
Speaking to Caroline Lyons and Sarah Benner on the What A Woman podcast, Ms Clarke, 58, said of having children: "It wasn’t part of our story. I don’t think children would have really survived, honestly I don’t."
She also said she had never understood the thinking that everyone wanted to be a parent.
"That would be like you telling me that everybody should want to be a bungee jumper or a racing driver – I can’t understand that," she said.
"It doesn’t make sense to me.
"I can see how people think that having children is going to give them some kind of continuity, something will live on when they die or maybe somebody will look after them when they’re old. I can see that because there’s a practical side to it. But I just never..."
After MacGowan died last year, his funeral cortege paraded through the streets of Dublin, before a celebrity-packed Mass was held in Tipperary, attended by a host of famous faces including Johnny Depp, Nick Cave, Bod Geldof, and President Michael D Higgins.
Ms Clarke explained how she reacted to MacGowan’s death and the aftermath.
"It’s nothing that you could ever really prepare for, I don’t think," she said.
"I’m sure there are people that have had a similar situation, but until it’s happened to you, you don’t know how you’ll react.
"It was something that I would have been afraid of for a very long time, because very soon after me and Shane got together people started telling me that he didn’t have very long to live. That would have been in 1986."
She continued: "People started telling me that Shane probably had six months to live, because of the way he pushed himself.
"I spent most of the time worrying about him and worrying that something was going to happen to him."
However, she said the experience of losing him had not been as earth-shattering as she had feared.
She recalled: "It surprised me that it wasn’t all terrible. I assumed that you would go into a deep depression and nothing would lift you out of it, that you would lose the will to live completely and stay like that.
"I had experienced depression and that’s what it feels like. I assumed it would be like depression, but worse. It did surprise me that we were able to celebrate Shane.
"At his funeral, there was a lot of laughter, dancing and singing. People enjoyed the funeral."
Plus: Glen Hansard and Lisa O’Neill perform ‘Fairytale of New York’ as a reflection after Communion.
Can honestly say this is the first time I’ve ever seen dancing in the aisles at a funeral… pic.twitter.com/FhVx8dzPXp
— Gavan Reilly (@gavreilly) December 8, 2023
Ms Clarke said MacGowan had changed her outlook on life, because of the way he loved people who lived on the margins of society. She said he would always stop and talk with homeless people, as well as give them money and share drinks and cigarettes with them.
He was "not impressed by famous people" but far more impressed by "taxi drivers," she told the podcast.
*This article was originally published on Evoke.ie.
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