In a second exclusive extract from her new guidebook to grief, Loose Women star Coleen talks about the shocking impact of a 30-year-old tragedy and gives an honest a frank account of losing a parent in more ways than one

Coleen Nolan knows more about grief then she would ever wish to.In fact, she’s literally written the book on it.

Her new guide A Hand To Hold – All I’ve Learnt About Grief …. shares the poignant stories from Coleen’s past – including this exclusive extract about the lessons she learned after her sister’s Bernie’s devastating death in 2013.

But here Coleen opens up about the loss of two very significant women in her her brotherBrian’s wife Linzie who died from a suddenly from a viral infection in her 30s….and the very different experience of losing her beloved mum Maureen to dementia after five years of pain.

Here, as she prepares to release her new book inspired by her Mirror and Co-op Funeralcare podcasts, COLEEN NOLAN share her honest and frank account….

Coleen Nolan shares an exclusive extract of her new book A Hand To Hold – All I’ve Learnt About Grief with the Mirror ( 
Image:
COPYRIGHT Rebecca Lupton 2024)

My first really notable experience with grief was when my sister-in-law, Linzie, died suddenly in 1991 after contracting a viral infection.

She was only 26 years old – the same age as I was – and it was such a terrible shock, it shook me to the core.

All these years later in fact, I don’t think I’ll ever get over that first sudden grief; it will haunt me forever.

But while my family and everyone who knew Linzie were trying to come to terms with their loss, I saw how hard people found it to know what to say to us. I think, from then on, I knew I wanted to be able to say a few words to other people who found themselves in my shoes. Of course, in the years between then and now, life has taken more people from me.

It was seven years later, in 1998, when we lost our father, Tommy, at only 73, to liver cancer.

In the intensity of grief, it can be hard to see that the loss can shape us almost as much as knowing the person did.

Just a few years later, our lovely mum, Maureen, passed after suffering terribly from Alzheimer’s disease.

Coleen grew up in Ilford with five sisters ( 
Image:
Mirrorpix via Getty Images)
Mum’s passing, or the lead up to it, was just awful.

We had to watch as the woman we all knew and loved simply disappeared and was replaced by an aggressive stranger who eventually didn’t recognise any of us.

Now us Nolans, are an Irish Catholic family. When I lost my beloved sister in-law at such a young age, I found myself screaming at an unjust God. Why would He take such a young, beautiful soul when there are evil people out there walking around as fit as fiddles?

I told myself back then that there couldn’t actually be a God, and that I no longer believed in him.

Yet much, much later, when my mother was dying, bed-bound and ravaged by her Alzheimer’s, I found myself turning to that same God and pleading with him to allow our mother a fast and peaceful death.

I remember one night I lay with her in the home we’d had to put her in, and I thought, ‘If there is a God, please let her pass peacefully – and quickly too’, as I couldn’t bear to see her suffer like she was.

When she finally died, I acknowledged that perhaps He had heard me because she did pass peacefully. And although it was heartbreaking, I also felt a huge sense of relief that she was no longer suffering.

A Hand to Hold – All I’ve Learnt About Grief By Coleen Nolan is available August 29 (HarperNorth). Hardback, ebook and audio all priced £20.