Barry Egan discussed his final email corespondances with late Cranberries singer Dolores O’Riordan in a new Irish Independent article:
“I’m happy in Limerick now,” she emailed a week last Wednesday. I was happy for her because I loved her and because I knew she had been through a personal hell over the last decade. So Dolores, more than anyone perhaps, deserved happiness. She had her troubles. They were well documented. She was human, just like the rest of us. We were friends for almost 17 years. Whenever she wanted to confess something to the world about herself, however shocking, I was her confessor in the Sunday Independent. I would have helped her any way I could. Sometimes, sadly, it was like that Elvis Presley line from Heartbreak Hotel: ‘They been so long on Lonely Street, they’ll never get back’. We talked via email during the last week of her life. She said she needed to have goals to look forward to and how she was feeling a lot better now. She said she had stopped looking back. It was great to talk to her.
Whenever I emailed her, she would reply, sometimes within the hour, to say that things were going positively in her life and that her counsellor thought she was making great progress. I was absolutely delighted for her. “Making music and looking forward is important,” she said. “Lots of love. Dolores x”.
“I have to stay positive and healthy,” she said cheerily, adding that she was going to go for a swim in Limerick. “Keeping up the exercise is important.
“Keep in touch love. Much love! Dolores.” She said that she would pass on my love to her mother.
