I would like to start with a quick word of advice, Beachy Head is a
beautiful serene and quiet place, The perfect place perhaps to park up and
start writing some words to say at your partners funeral.

Here's the thing, as I found this morning there is a marvelous
volunteer chaplaincy service patrolling beachy head, and a chap sitting
alone in a badly parked land rover car, clearly looking rather sad while
writing a note can actually set quite a few alarm bells ringing and draw quite
a lot of very kind attention.

Bear would have laughed.. Alot.

I made a donation to the Beachy Head volunteer chaplaincy team and drove
back down to a safer view on the sea front.

As most of you will know Sarah was known to me and many others as Bear.
Her life lasted just four decades and I had the privilege to know her in each
of them and we shared the last thirteen of them as a family.

When I first met Bear she has just turned 10 it was the I thought she
was wonderful then just tremendous fun and so full of life I would stay with
her family for weeks at a time in the holidays her older brother Paul my best
friend from school was a keen snooker player at the time, He had his own slate
table in the garage and so was never short of friends either. Mid way through a
carefully organised tournament bear would burst into the garage seize the cue
ball and run. Chaos would ensue she would either ransom it back for hard cash
or would challenge her brother to a fight for it either way she would win. Once
the cue ball had been returned, it's ransom having been paid in either cash or
pain she would announce that she was taking orders for banana sandwiches or
banana splits sometimes both they were equally delicious and made with the
greatest love and care, I asked her at the time and later in life why the
ambushes and she said because it was just really good fun and she was right it
was.

The next decade her teenage years, what can be said, many of you will
have your own wonderful memories of Bear in this decade,

Our discovery that Alleyns school tennis courts were of excellent
quality and always free to play a match on by simply negotiating the cast iron
spiked fence that protected them. One of bears funniest and favorite dinner
party stories is her description of helping me in some part save both our
future legacies by helping free me from what had become an extremely delicate
situation.

I was snagged straddling on what looked and felt to me a particularly
sharp and pointy cast iron spike on the fence, trapped by the inside leg
of what I though at the time extremely fashionable baggy trousers.

Bear turned what to a young man at the time seemed to be a very touch
and go situation into something really quite hilarious when she stopped
laughing enough she so kindly and gently freed me and my trousers from serious
peril and I remember laughing a lot too while breathing a great sigh of
relief.

This was the decade Bear hit the road in her first car a restored
Gunmetal Grey beetle, she defined I think the term 'driving like she stole it'
with a soundtrack to match.

I have the perhaps dubious honor of introducing Bear to Covent Garden as
a night time destination its many bars not least the Brahms and Liszt piano
bar. I am sure no one who went their can ever completely forget the Dan McKay
band, his running shorts and keyboard, and his weekly Friday
night renditions of Don McLean’s 'American Pie' there is too
much to say here about those days and wonderful period in time here but
everyone will have their own memories some to share and others to remember in
silence but no less precious.

Bear would later say when we reminisced on that time that our youth was
never wasted on us; those were the years when we were all really just free to
be.

Bears Twenties and thirties brought with them many wonderful
achievements she launched her own business her wonderful shop 'Pumpkin' and
soon after the birth of the wonderful Izzy, she welcomed the superb Hannah into
her life and placed her next to Izzy and six years later the birth of Imogen
her miracle baby.

Through out all else that these decades brought with them bear sailed on
through she never let anything change her zest for life and happiness for
living and she proved herself above all else to be the most kind and gentle
mother to all.

Bear was 29 when she was first diagnosed with Breast Cancer I was with
her when they told us, we sat in the waiting room at Kings college hospital
while we waited our turn to be called we could see the fear on peoples faces as
they were called into the consulting room before us and then the relief and
shear joy on their faces as they came out.

Bear warned me and what we came to realise was that anyone with 'it's
bad news I'm afraid' as they described it was last to be called in.

So cancer kicked its way into our world but as I have described on her
just giving page Bear never ever allowed it to rule our lives or ever define
who she was she never ever gave up fighting and she created a world for us to
live in that was shielded by her from her illness she used her wonderful bright
zest for living and used it to create a world for us to live in that was full
of happiness, love and energy.

Bear simply was my world, for thirteen years I lived in orbit around her
it was always a just a wonderfully warm place to be, some of my most treasured
times with her will be the simple days of just following on right behind her as
she seized each day and charged about.

So she he has left us here to live on in heaven, but she has not left me
has not left me empty or alone for although I miss her more than I truly know
how to express she has left a wonderful legacy to me of superb people you all
here today, but more than that she has molded, reared and influenced three of
the most wonderful young women in the world. Hannah, Izzy and Imogen they are
all three quite different from one another but all three are indelibly united
as all have distinct attributes direct from Bear they are her legacy to the
world and they are her finest achievement she was and so will always remain so
proud of them and we of her.



My words here are not enough to describe my feelings for her and the
loss we feel, she always said I lacked a decent vocabulary and this time as
ever I agree with her.



Bear we miss you so very much but you live as part of each of us in our
hearts and minds we are forever blessed to have been so close by you.