Sarah Richards is gone and so has a lot of Joy and Fun, Laughter and Love

This should have been a happy post about the fun, creativity and mayhem of the field trip. However while we were returning, a bus full of knackered/energized art students from a wonderful time in Pembrokeshire the lovely bubbly Sarah was closing her eyes and quietly slipping away into the unknown her body giving up the unequal struggle with breast cancer and chemotherapy and resultant infection.

It was all so fast - she was only diagnosed in September last year, 3 successful rounds of Chemo, jolly parties of loud ladies accompanying her to Christies as she couldn't drive, chatty emails about how loosing a breast or two would be OK as no one had looked at them for 5 years anyway. the lovely Sarah still in top form - more concerned about making sure friends picked up enough cat food and looked after her furry friends while she was in hospital than about herself.

Now she's gone I'm trying to remember the joy and happiness and Fun that she brought to everyone who knew her, Mad Sarah spending the money she had put aside for mending the central heating boiler on a trip to New York and Vegan Yarn - always hopeful that her prince would come one day. Loving Chaotic Sarah one of my pillars of strength in times of darkness, taking me to Art Galleries and the Theatre, watching weird films at the Cournerhouse and listening to South Pacific and Peggy Lee, dancing with my sister, myself and other mad ladies to Sisters are doing it for themselves and hoping to Free Nelson Mandela (he was still incarcerated at this point), introducing me to Bookcrossing . I have known her nearly half my life, met in crisis between husbands one and two.

I can't believe she has gone so quickly, one minute a force of nature - the next an empty shell.

I'm trying to remember and be happy - I'm not - I am desolated, sad and bereaved, tears leaking out at intervals - when I heard the news I howled - I didn't think people actually did that!. It's so unfair - why don't the bad people die not my lovely Sarah.

Sarah Richards I loved you so much.