Holly lived in Carrickfergus with her mum Pamela, dad Jamie, brother Harry and sister Heidi. Holly was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma in early 2024 and sadly died on Thursday 28th November 2024 aged 20.

In honour of her courage and her bright spirit, Holly’s family are generously sharing her story this Grief Awareness Week, giving us a glimpse into her life, the challenges they faced together, and the support they received along the way.

We are incredibly grateful to Holly’s family for their strength and openness in sharing their daughter with us. Thank you, Pamela, Jamie, Harry and Heidi, for introducing us all to Holly and trusting us with her story. Your strength and love are felt throughout and we are honoured to be a part of sharing Holly’s memory.

Holly was our first child. A very happy, easy baby. Her first word was happy. She loved to spend time with her brother and sister, playing outside or going away in our caravan, having family holidays.

She was a special child to us. Being our first child, a little friend for her brother and sister always. She was a very sociable, a very bubbly wee girl. She loved fashion. She loved dressing up for going out with her friends, going out to dinner. She loved spending time at home with us as well.

She always said she was a homebird. She told us that she would always be going on our family holidays. If she could have got the neighbours to move out of next door, that’s where she’d live. She just wanted to live here with us or very close by. Family was very much at the centre of her, and that was very special for us.

She would have messaged us. She was always on the phone. Always asking what was happening. She went to school here locally in Carrickfergus, she went to Ulidia. She enjoyed school, but probably for the social side more than anything. She really enjoyed meeting up with her friends and chatting with them. She got ‘Belle of the ball’, but in the same year she won ‘Human Foghorn’. She was loud, but that was our Holly.

Holly left school after finishing her A Levels. She wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do, so took a job in a local school as a learning support assistant. That Christmas, she came and said that she’d found a lump on her side and she was worried about what it was. At first you sort of think, oh, you’ve just pulled a muscle. She trained a few times a week and we never really thought very much of it, but after a week or two, something just hits in your head and you think, that’s not right.

We need to get you seen.

We took her up and she was quickly referred to the hospital and had her scans, and from the first scan we knew there was something of concern. Holly was referred to the consultant on the 14th of February 2024. We were told then that it was a sarcoma of the chest wall, and she’d be starting treatment, which would be chemotherapy.

She had very long treatment in hospital. She would be in and out every week, and every other week she would spend time in. They were very good to her in hospital, but we were very lucky to meet Lucy, from Cancer Fund for Children.

Lucy would have come up and spent time with Holly, playing games, drinking coffee, making wee pictures or making her scrapbook. Having that time to spend with somebody to talk to outside of the family, to have somebody who she could relate to and ask questions that she wasn’t asking us, was such a support for her. We were very thankful for her to have that.

Holly had her surgery in July. It was a long surgery, a very difficult day, but she recovered well and we thought that they’d got all of the cancer and that was her. Her next treatment was proton beam therapy in Manchester for completion. So while she was recovering, we managed to take a break to Daisy Lodge together as a family.

That turned out to be our last break.

We weren’t aware of that, but it was. It was lovely and relaxing and Holly raved about the food. It was so special to be able to spend that time down there and be looked after as a whole family. All of us.

Holly went to Manchester for proton beam therapy, which we thought was curative treatment for her. While she was over there, she took sick. They did further tests and realised that the cancer had come back.

We came home that day to the rest of the family, and when we got back to Belfast, we were told that it was terminal. Of course, being Holly, she was worried about what everybody else would think.

She was worried about her brother and sister and how she would tell everybody else that news. We just said, “You don’t have to. That’s us, we’ll tell them for you.”

Holly only got ten days at home until she passed away.

The support we’ve had from Cancer Fund for Children has been very impactful to us as a family, especially for my daughter Heidi, to help her come to terms with Holly’s diagnosis, her treatment, and when she passed away.

We’re so grateful for the help that they’ve provided us. Heidi had lots of questions that she might not have wanted to ask Jamie and I as her parents, so it was very helpful for her to have an individual that she could speak to, and trust that she could share things with them that perhaps she didn’t want to say to us. It really helped her come to terms with her fears and the anxiety that she had.

It’s so, so difficult to go through that process, and we’d like to recognise Holly’s life and to let other people know what she had to go through and also us as a family as well. You can’t expect anybody else to understand properly, but it’s really important to us that we don’t have her forgotten.

I still have three children.

For more information on how we support families like Holly’s this Grief Awareness Week, find out more about our bereavement support here!