Friday, May 26th marked a sad anniversary: It’s been a year since the unexpected passing of Ray Liotta. The beloved actor was 67. At the time of his death, the Goodfellas star was engaged to Jacy Nittolo. On Friday Nittolo posted a moving tribute to her late fiancé.
“A year ago today I was on a flight home from the Dominican Republic by myself in shock. My entire world unexpectedly turned upside down,” Nittolo wrote on Instagram. She recounted how a stranger comforted her by sitting next to her and not saying a word. “She gently grabbed and held my hand the entire flight as I cried and looked out the window. When we landed she looked at me and said everything is going to be ok. Your going to be ok.”
“It’s been a heavy year of pain, heartache, healing, growing and accepting what is,” Nittolo wrote. “Learning to smile at what was. It supposedly gets easier with time. No time will change a loss so great.You just learn to live with it and keep going, trusting that all will be ok.”
It took almost a year for Liotta’s family to publicly reveal the cause of his death: As per TMZ, it was “respiratory insufficiency, pulmonary edema — a.k.a. fluid in his lungs — and acute heart failure.” He also suffered from “atherosclerosis — a thickening of the arteries caused by a buildup of plaque in the inner lining — something that often leads to diabetes and other health issues.”
Liotta passed away in his sleep while filming the movie Dangerous Waters in the Dominican Republic. One of what turned out to be his final films, Cocaine Bear, was released earlier this year.
(Via HuffPost)