‘When I close my eyes, I can still hear my father’s voice, my mother’s voice, my sister’s voice’ – Sheila O’Flanagan on grief

The bestselling author on finding inner strength after losing both parents and her youngest sister

Bestselling author Sheila O’Flanagan. Photo: Mark Condren

Sheila O’Flanagan’s last conversation with her younger sister Joan was not without humour. It was in July 2023, a week or so before she died in a hospice in Belfast, where she’d been for months with breast cancer.

Their mother Patricia had died seven weeks beforehand, and Joan hadn’t been able to attend the funeral in Dublin.