Life after Loss
After her beau disappeared at sea, Olivia Newton-John moves on without "the most romantic person I've ever known"
Throughout her grief, she took long daily walks with her 9-year-old Irish setter, Jack. One recent day, though, Olivia Newton-John allowed a visitor to tag along.
Dressed in khaki capris and a long-sleeve T-shirt that read “Laugh At Yourself Often”, she stopped at one point to feed a neighbour’s horse a carrot. “This is one of my favourite sounds in the whole world,” she said of the loud munching. But it quickly became clear that her emotions were still on overload.
Walking in silence amid the oaks and wildflowers she began to cry, and pretty soon tears were flowing freely. “Everybody has suffering,” she says. “I don’t think any of us escapes something.”
For 15 months, Olivia has been coping with the mysterious disappearance of her long-time boyfriend, Patrick McDermott, who vanished while on a fishing trip off Los Angeles on July 1, 2005. “I loved him a lot and I miss him a lot,” says Olivia, 58, speaking publicly for the first time about her loss. “He was the most romantic person I have ever known.”
To honour her eight-year love affair with Patrick, 48, an accomplished amateur musician, Olivia chose her own great love-music. The result is a new age-ish album, Grace and Gratitude. “This album is helping me get through it, as well as to help others and give gratitude for what I do have, because I know how lucky I am.”
Yet there is no denying the hurt she has endured over her loss. “She was devastated,” says Amy Sky, who produced the album and is a friend of Olivia’s. “She just asked for our prayers and our support.”
Olivia’s suffering has been all the more agonising because of the continuing mystery surrounding Patrick’s disappearance (see box, above). Though no body has ever been found, initial indications suggested that Patrick, who had a history of financial problems and owed child support for a son by a previous marriage, fell or jumped overboard before the charter boat Freedom docked at the port of San Pedro after an all-night excursion.
But earlier this year a more bizarre alternative arose when reports in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph claimed witnesses had seen someone resembling Patrick in the vicinity of the Mexican resort town of Cabo San Lucas. That stirred speculation that Patrick had faked his own death to start a new life. To Olivia’s frustration, a US Coast Guard investigation has still not established whether Patrick did or did not get off the boat. “I go through every emotion,” says Olivia of the rumours. “It just stirs it up again. It creates that ‘What if?’ And I don’t know each time.”
Deep down, however, she remains convinced that Patrick didn’t fake his own death, if only because he would never subject his now 14-year-old son to such anguish. “He just wouldn’t do that,” she says. “His son was everything to him.”
That feeling is echoed by the boy’s mother, Patrick’s ex-wife, Yvette Nipar, 41, who has become close friends with Olivia during the ordeal. “I can’t imagine him leaving our son ever,” says Yvette, an actress who was divorced from Patrick in 1998. “I just can’t see it.” Yvette also scoffs at the notion that he might have decided to flee out of fear that she was about to have him thrown behind bars as a deadbeat dad. “Never in a million years would I put my son’s father in jail,” she says flatly.
In any event, the first six months of Patrick’s disappearance were almost unbearable for Olivia. “I took antidepressants,” she says. “I had to.” She is quick to add that the healing only really began when she stopped taking the medication.
"I've been through cancer and divorce. Nothing compares to this"
“Once you go off them you can deal with it better,” she says. “It’s important to go deeply into your emotions. You have to cry.” One of her lingering sources of pain is that at the time of Patrick’s disappearance, the couple were going through a brief separation. Indeed it was not Olivia who reported him missing (she was in Australia visiting a critically injured goddaughter), but rather Yvette, who notified authorities on July 11 after Patrick failed to show up for a visit with his son. “We were on a break, but we had been on breaks before and we got back together,” Olivia explains. “We had a wonderful relationship. He had a good soul, a good heart.”
The couple met in 1996, during the filming of an advertisement, not long after Olivia had split from her husband of 11 years, Matt Lattanzi. (They have a daughter, Chloe, now 20.)
Aside from his camera work, Patrick had a gift for charming everyone he met. He won Olivia’s heart one Valentine’s Day by leaving clues around Malibu that led her down to the beach, where he was waiting with a bottle of champagne. Nevertheless, in recent years Patrick had been barely getting by financially and had even filed for bankruptcy in 2000. “He had a lot of pride, says Olivia of Patrick’s money woes. “So I didn’t know the extent of it.”
Looking back, Olivia’s friends believe she was, in some respects, unusually well-equipped to deal with the loss of her lover. In 1992 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo a partial mastectomy and chemotherapy, and the strength she gained from that battle seems to have come in handy.
Says her friend Amy Sky: “Once you’ve been to the bottom and gotten back up, I think you realise that there is always a way up from any bottom. And that life doesn’t guarantee that you get only one bottom.” But as Olivia points out, “I’ve been through cancer and divorce. Nothing compares to this.”
After Patrick went missing, Amy broached the idea to Olivia of using music to cope. In January they teamed up in Malibu and within a matter of weeks had written many of the songs that would make it onto Grace. “She was willing to be open and channel her own need for healing into what we were writing, so it’s very authentic,” says Amy.
Still, recording the music wasn’t always easy. There were days when Olivia became emotional, but the effort had the desired effect on her psyche. “It gave me a lot of pleasure and peace to do it,” says Olivia of the recording sessions. “It was a wonderful experience-and difficult at times.”
Yvette, who talks to Olivia most days, says that she, for one, finds the album a great comfort. “Another crazy confirmation that good comes out of bad,” she says. “I think it’s phenomenal.”
Meanwhile, Olivia acknowledges that a bit of the pain of her loss will be with her the rest of her life. As a memory of her love, she created a stone labyrinth in the back of her Malibu home, where she often goes to pray and meditate. She is quick to add that she no longer feels in danger of getting lost in those memories. As she puts it, “I’m moving forward in a positive way.”
By Bill Hewitt. Reported by Sandra Marquez in Malibu
To hear a sampling of Newton-John’s Grace and Gratitude, log on to PEOPLE.COM/OLIVIA
The Case Is Still Open
Fifteen months after Patrick McDermott went missing, the investigation of the case appears to have stalled. “There is nothing new right now,” says US Coast Guard Warrant Officer Scott Epperson.
What is known is that Patrick boarded the Freedom on June 30 for a fishing trip, and that his wallet and car keys were found after the boat’s return on July 1. Otherwise his movements remain sketchy. As for the reported sightings in Mexico, some witnesses later said that they weren’t certain the man they saw was Patrick. Says one, restaurateur John Brown: “I never said I definitely identified him.”