Bláthnaid Ní Chofaigh recently had a dream that has stayed with her. In it, the RTÉ presenter’s youngest sister, Bríd, announced that she was 60 years old. Bláthnaid asked Bríd why she would say that, given she was only around 40. Bríd replied that she was so sick, she didn’t know what she’s saying. At that moment, Bláthnaid realised she was dreaming. “I said, ‘Oh! Táimid ag brionglóideach’, (we are dreaming!), and she was so disappointed.” Bláthnaid tried to make it right, tried to convince her little sister that they weren’t actually asleep. But it was too late. Bláthnaid woke, and reality hit.

Dreams like this are among the many surreal aspects of grief Bláthnaid and the wider Ní Chofaigh family are navigating, along with Bríd’s husband, Adam, and her friends. Bríd died in January, a few days after her 42nd birthday, from cervical cancer that had spread.

Bláthnaid is talking about her sister under the autumn sun in the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin, surrounded by verdant beauty. Walkers out for an afternoon stroll occasionally offer a nod towards the recognisable Nationwide presenter. She fishes in her handbag for tissues, breaking down in tears. “I’m going away at Christmas,” she says. “I’m going to see my daughter in Sydney.” She struggles to get her words out. “And the yearning I have to go away, and think if I come home, it won’t have happened.”

I remember Bríd too. We were classmates in secondary school. Bríd enrolled in Coláiste Íosagáin in Booterstown in Dublin a few years in. She was tall, glamorous, funny, and thanks to her upbringing in the small Gaeltacht village of Ráth Chairn in Co Meath, her Irish was p