A popular Belfast school teacher has been described as a dedicated and loving wife, mother and daughter at her funeral today.
Sinead Dooher's funeral heard her friends and family are "broken in grief". The English teacher at Our Lady and St Patrick's College was laid to rest following a service at St Therese of Lisieux Church on Somerton Road after she passed away on Sunday, March 9. Alongside her friends and family, many of her former students and colleagues attended the funeral.
Originally from Ballymagorey in Co Tyrone, the service heard that Sinead would now join her younger brother Aidan in heaven and that all who knew her were "broken in grief" at her passing.
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The funeral heard that Sinead was a loving, ambitious and outspoken woman who "adored nice shoes" and was known for her sense of style.
The oldest daughter of her parents Johnny and Gabrielle, she grew up in a loving and caring home in Ballymagorry that was full of noise and activity, with Sinead replicating the dedication and loyalty shown by her parents with her husband and children.
The Dooher family were very passionate about GAA and their local club and while Sinead would attend matches with them every weekend growing up, she would not leave the car and preferred to sit inside reading a book.
Sinead was an "accomplished scholar" who achieved one of the highest A-level results in Northern Irish history before going on to Trinity University in Dublin to study law. However her true passion was for literature and she would soon follow in her parents footsteps in becoming a teacher, spending nearly 30 years at the English department of Our Lady and St Patrick's College Knock.
At university Sinead met her best friend, with the funeral hearing that their last meeting together was a very emotional one.
Sinead's students described her as a "beautiful, energetic and trendy" teacher who may have given them far too much homework on occasions while she developed close friendships with a number of her colleagues within the school.
Her husband Gary noted how he was often told he was "punching up" in his relationship with Sinead, and that he felt he could have "put a hole in the stratosphere" due to how much he was "punching up" by being with her for 31 years.
He will miss the debates the couple had over the news topics of the day and how Sinead was always very strong in her opinions, which she had on everything.
The couple have raised three children, Daíre, Ruairí and Aoibhe, who Sinead was completely devoted to with the funeral hearing that "as a mum she had no peers". She had hoped to write a letter to each one individually but due to her condition developing so quickly, she was unable to.
The funeral heard that everyone who loved Sinead are broken in grief, but overwhelmed with the love she had given each one of them.
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