Bernie Nolan’s tragic death from cancer aged just 52 hit all the Nolan Sisters hard. In 2010, she became the third sister to be diagnosed with the disease and initially was said to be in remission in 2012 after chemotherapy and a mastectomy. However just months later, the actress - who had starred in The Bill and Brookside - was told it had returned and spread to her brain, bones, lungs and liver.
Now 11 years on, Daily Mirror agony aunt and Loose Women star COLEEN NOLAN shares an extract from her new book, Hand to Hold: All I’ve Learnt About Grief, revealing the lessons she learned from those dark days that followed and the three little words at the funeral which left her fuming...
. Bernie Nolan will never be forgotten - we simply won’t let that happen. We talk about her all the time, wherever we are.
We’ll say things like, ‘Oh, Bernie would love this!’ or ‘Remember when Bernie did such and such?’. It’s both comforting and sad, but we won’t stop it. We want to feel she’s with us, always.
Our beautiful sister Bernie died in 2013, aged just 52, after a long and arduous battle with cancer. She passed peacefully, surrounded by all of us, all the people she loved. Bernie had intricately planned her own celebration of life in minute detail.
This took a huge amount of pressure away from the rest of us, and it was lovely that we even had moments during that service when we were laughing and hugging each other as we shared happier memories. The service itself wa.