By Barry Egan of Ireland's Sunday Independent

"I NEVER expected I would be a person whose mother would die," Andrea Corr says. But, on November 24 1999, that all changed .….

Jean Corr had a serious brain haemorrhage in the middle of the night. She was on full ventilation at that stage in the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, being treated for a rare lung disease. Every day her condition seemed to worsen. The doctors did all they could, each day presenting the Corr family with a new option.

"Okay, okay, this is bad but now we'll do this."

"And now we'll not bother looking for infection; we'll go for a double lung transplant."

And then Jean Corr's body gave up.

"The stroke just stopped the whole rigmarole and it let her go," explains Andrea. "There was no point in keeping her on ventilation. We had to turn off the machine. Y'know, because she was completely .…. It was a massive stroke that nobody could be beyond a vegetable with. So she was spared. And we were spared as well. So I have a lot to give thanks to God for."

The Corr family knew their mother was very sick, but they didn't fully realise how rapid and aggressive her illness was. It was a shock how fast fibro alveolitis finally took their mother. This rare lung condition basically scars the holes where the lungs breathe. The doctors don't really know how to treat it, except with steroids. One medical theory, unproven, is that Jean Corr might have inhaled something as a child, or it could have been genetic. The truth is that they have no idea why Jean Corr got fibro alveolitis.

Andrea Corr knows that nobody - not even pop stars with a number one album in 25 countries around the world - gets away with a life that is blessed and content from beginning to end. This is why the sadness has not eaten her up whole, nor the grief enfeebled her.

When Jean died tragically young at 57 last year, that her passing was mourned and considered irrevocable. Thirteen months on, her daughter Andrea is a young woman who has made sense of her mother's death. "She could have gotten a lung transplant and that would be another struggle for five years," she says. "The expectancy is that only 50 per cent live for five years. Mammy wanted to live. She didn't want half a life. I didn't want it for her. As soon as she got this disease, there was worry in her life, and I hated that for her …"

There is a very long pause. Andrea's mouth curls like a Michelangelo angel. She sighs.I tell her I don't know what to say. "I wouldn't want Mammy to go around worrying: going over and back to Newcastle, you know, more steroids, more worrying, the rejection that happens, still fighting and fighting and with half the quality of life that a woman like her wasn't about.

"Ask anyone who knew her … Mammy was just not a half-liver. She loved .…. loved life. And also with the worrying and the lack of breath and the whole lot … and yet her fighting to get better and healthy … I suppose it's an Irish guilt thing that we all have, but there was a slight part of her that would slightly blame herself. "Like, initially she went, `Oh, I'm just not fit.' It was just so unfair for her to ever think it was anything to do with her or to feel any guilt or to feel any, y'know .…. `Oh God, what happened?' By the last while, it was so tiring and wrecking her that she was worried and tired all the time; she didn't smile … and Mammy always smiled and always laughed. And when she did smile it was for our sakes and for Dad's."

She Andrea Corr realises that losing her mother is one of the most awful things that will happen in her life. But Andrea she has grown from her the pain has helped her grow. The poet Sylvia Plath once said she talked to God but the sky is empty. In her time of sorrow, Andrea Corr didn't find the sky empty at all. Her faith in God has helped turn that very real pain into something wonderful. "I just think that I have got God to thank that he took her in the middle of the night before she even had a chance to get a lung transplant or go through all that and have half a life .…. and have further worry."

Weren't you angry with God for taking your mother? "No, because I don't get angry with God. I think of it in an awful lot of different ways. I am angry she got ill. I am angry she had pain. We don't have a reason for that. We're not supposed to. I just have to keep my faith, and I am. I really believe I'll see her again. I believe it's all for a reason. I believe everything is for a reason and once we're good and we follow our hearts, some day we'll know."

In the end, the Corr family did not want their mother to suffer humiliation. Jean had suffered enough. Andrea can remember that during the whole deteriorating process her own anger would rise inside if her mother was humiliated in any way. "Because death," Andrea says, "is quite humiliating."

"But it is something that we have to go through. I didn't want her to be humiliated. I didn't want her to struggle and struggle and in the end there was no point in her fighting because she was going to die. The idea of her fighting and struggling … the end result was going to be the same: quite humiliating for her. I didn't want that."

"At this time I have so much to be thankful to God for. On that level, sometimes I look at it - and I have to look at it this way - that Mammy was so fantastic that God wanted her so much that he really insisted: `No, no, I'm having her.' That's flattering."