I remember the first time I held her, a tiny, furious bundle demanding to be heard. Decades later, I held that same hand as she slipped away, her body broken by a disease she faced with impossible grace. Between those two moments stretched a life lived loudly: her Bowelbabe blog, the campaigns, the way she turned her own fear into fuel for others. She refused to be just a patient; she became a movement.
Now, in the quiet after the storm, grief arrives in waves—for me, and most painfully for Hugo and Eloise. They’ve lost their mother; I’ve lost my daughter, and yet her presence is everywhere. In their resilience. In every story shared by someone she helped. We honor her not by pretending we’re okay, but by doing exactly what she taught us: squeezing joy out of ordinary days, loving outrageously, and never wasting a moment we’re given.