Dame Joan Collins shares heartbreak and grief in moving post - fans react

The 88-year-old opened up on Instagram

joan collins solemn

Dame Joan Collins has taken to Instagram with a heartbreaking post on the anniversary of her sister's death.

The 88-year-old actress shared a throwback family snapshot showing her sat with her younger sibling Jackie on her knee. Her arms are wrapped around her baby sister and she is looking lovingly at the little girl.

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"Sad thinking about my #babysister who left this world six years ago today," Joan wrote. "#ripjackiecollins."

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Fans were quick to reach out and offer their support and condolences. "I absolutely loved being around her," GMB's Richard Arnold wrote. "Gorgeous photo. Thinking of you today, darling, & sending a big hug x," a second follower wrote while a third added: "Sending you love on a difficult day."

Joan shared a childhood photo as she remembered Jackie

Romance novelist Jackie was 77 when she passed away in September 2015 - just two weeks before her 78th birthday. She had been diagnosed with stage four breast cancer more than six years before her passing but had kept the news almost entirely to herself, bar her daughters.

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On the one-year anniversary of her sister's death, Joan revealed how she was coping during an interview on This Morning. "I miss her terribly," the Dynasty star confided. "Grief is a process. I think I cried for two or three months then you get over it and accept it in a begrudging way. Then you get angry like why did this happen to her.

The sisters had a very close relationship

"There's no good thing about it but the way around it is thinking of it like we are just in different places, as if she's just in LA."

Joan previously revealed she only found out about her sister's breast cancer battle three weeks before she passed away, and penned a touching tribute to Jackie just days after her death.

Jackie and Joan pictured together in 1977

Concluding her 2,000-word eulogy, Joan wrote: "I don’t think I will ever recover from the sadness of losing my beautiful baby sister…I feel her spirit, I hear her wonderful laugh and I see her all the time in the hundreds of photos of her sprinkled around my home. She wasn't just a star – to me she was an entire galaxy."

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