'The View' co-host opens up about coping with her grief in a new interview for 'Porter.'
Coping with grief and loss is an ongoing process that Meghan McCain is still learning how to deal with.
The 34-year-old The View co-host's father, Senator John McCain, died in August of last year, and she still struggles with losing one of the most important people in her life. In a new interview with Porter (on stands Feb. 8), Meghan gets candid about how difficult it has been to move on after the death of her father and delivering the emotional eulogy at his funeral in September.
“It’s horrible,” she reveals. “I’m in therapy, I’m in counseling. I’m reading Joan Didion – books and books about grief, doing everything I possibly can. I’m trying to meditate – I’m terrible at it.”
Meghan and the late politician were extremely close, she says, sharing that they spoke up to seven times a day and still has the impulse to reach for her phone and call him.
“I wake up groggy sometimes and have this impulse to call him, which I have done... but he’s not answering,” Meghan sadly retells. “I feel like I’ve lost a part of my body, like I’ve had something amputated. I know that sounds dramatic.”
While he may no longer be by her side, Meghan did share that before his death he gave her some sound advice. “You need to be tough. You need to speak out. You need to speak for the things you believe in," she shares.
She did just that at her father's funeral, where she made headlines for her passionate eulogy, which also took jabs at President Donald Trump, whose daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, were at the service.
"I know he would have loved it," she said of the eulogy. "I know it sounds strange. But when I got up and walked to the lectern, I saw his casket and said to myself: 'Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me…' And I felt him with me."
She also admits that she didn't know whether Ivanka and her husband were invited or they just showed up. "I didn’t know they were coming, I didn’t know until I saw them there." Meghan recalls. "I looked over and saw them and well… they got to listen to what I had to say."
While she's continued to speak out on her grief via social media or on The View, Meghan notes that to help her feel closer to her father, she "sleeps with his sweatshirt."
She also is blessed to have husband Ben Domenech by her side through these tough times. “My dad loved Ben, and my dad hated every boyfriend – hated, hated!” she said, adding that her father famously called him a jerk, “I told [Ben], you know he loves you if he’s calling you a jerk.”
The pair was together at John's bedside when he died. “If you can do brain cancer with someone and still have a great relationship, which we do, I think that’s what saved me," she notes.
For more on Meghan, watch below.
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