The sentence that stayed with me throughout Deborah’s final hours—“I brought my daughter into the world, and I took her out of it”—felt like both a truth and a weight no parent is ever prepared to carry. Sitting beside her bed, my hand wrapped around hers, time seemed to lose its usual shape. Minutes stretched, then folded in on themselves, becoming something muted and unfamiliar. There is no instruction manual for accompanying your child toward the end of her life, no guidance for how to breathe steadily beside someone whose breaths are slowing, softening, and slipping away. Parents are not meant to outlive their children. They are not meant to watch them grow smaller beneath hospital sheets or whisper reassurances they once believed they would never need to speak. When Deborah was born, I held her with a fierce, instinctive strength I didn’t know I possessed; on this last day, I held her with that same strength, but now it was guiding her toward rest rather than into life. Her hand felt smaller than I remembered—those hands that once tied shoelaces, typed thousands of words of encouragement, held her children tightly, and fought relentlessly for survival. Now they rested in mine, warm only because I surrounded them. She hovered in that fragile space between here and somewhere else, where every breath feels tentative and time itself seems to hesitate. Grief settled heavily in my chest, tangled with an unexpected sense of relief. Grief, because losing her felt like losing part of my own body and spirit. Relief, because watching her suffer had become unbearable. For five and a half years, she had lived in cycles of hope and heartbreak—surgeries, chemotherapy, experimental treatments, moments of optimism followed by devastating news. Death had circled her constantly, patient and persistent. And yet, through it all, Deborah resisted with a courage that left everyone who knew her in awe.
Her fight was never abstract. It had names, faces, and heartbeats. She fought for Hugo and Eloise, who were just sixteen and fourteen when they lost her—ages when children still lean heavily on their mother’s presence, guidance, and reassurance. She fought for her husband, who stood by her through every appointment, every sleepless night, every quiet fear spoken in the dark. She fought for friends who watched helplessly, wanting to take some of her pain away. She fought for strangers who reached out online, frightened by symptoms, diagnoses, or the unknown. And though she rarely said it aloud, she also fought for herself—for the life she still cherished, the future she still imagined, the moments she was determined to create while she could. Stage 4 bowel cancer stripped away comfort, energy, and normalcy, but it never stripped away her spirit. Her humor became a weapon, sharp and defiant. Her honesty became a shield. She spoke openly about the messy, undignified, frightening parts of illness, refusing to sanitize the truth. In doing so, she made countless people feel less alone. She prompted conversations families had been avoiding for years. She pushed people to book GP appointments they had postponed. She saved lives. By turning her private suffering into a public mission, Deborah became a guiding light for people navigating their own darkness. And amid all that advocacy, she remained unmistakably herself—Deborah the mother, Deborah the friend, Deborah the woman who wore bright dresses even when standing was exhausting. She laughed loudly at family meals. She held her children close. She wrung joy from days that were steadily shrinking. But the decline came all the same. At first it was slow: treatments that failed, pain that returned too soon, tumors that refused to retreat. Then it accelerated. Her strength faded, her body thinned, her skin paled. Still, the spark in her eyes, stubborn and luminous, refused to vanish entirely.
When hospice was finally mentioned, Deborah did not crumble. She absorbed the words quietly and looked at me with calm determination. “Mum, I don’t want them to be scared,” she said. “Promise me we’ll keep things light.” Even in the face of death, she was thinking of others. She wanted warmth to surround her family. She wanted laughter to drift through the room where she would take her final breaths. She wanted her children to walk into the space without dread. She wanted to be remembered smiling, as she had lived. That was who Deborah was—someone who carried light into the bleakest corners, determined to soften the sharp edges for everyone around her. The last days, surprisingly, were gentle. She slept more often and spoke more quietly. When she was awake, she held my hand with startling clarity, as though concentrating all her remaining strength into those moments. She didn’t dwell on dying. Instead, she talked about Hugo and Eloise, about the milestones she wished she could see, about the love she wanted them to feel at every stage of their lives. She spoke about resilience and hope, her voice faint but unwavering. Gradually, sleep claimed her for longer stretches. Her movements softened. Her breathing deepened. Then came the final morning, wrapped in an unbearable stillness. Even the air felt fragile, as if afraid to disturb her. I held her hand and remembered the feel of her newborn fingers decades earlier. I leaned close and whispered, “It’s okay, sweetheart. You can rest now.” She exhaled softly—a breath that felt like both surrender and release—and in that gentle moment, she slipped free.
People often ask how I manage now, as if grief follows a schedule or a predictable path. The truth is that grief has no clean lines. It arrives in waves, unpredictable and unannounced. Some days the waves are small enough to step over; other days they are powerful enough to knock me flat. I keep going because reminders of Deborah are everywhere. I hear her laugh echoed in Hugo’s jokes. I see her determination reflected in Eloise’s expressions. I sense her presence in ordinary moments—a cup of tea warming my hands, sunlight spilling through a window, a silly message she would have sent just to make me smile. I keep going because the children need stability, and she would never have wanted sorrow to hollow me out. Most of all, I keep going because Deborah taught me how. She showed me that joy can be carved from even the darkest circumstances, that purpose can grow out of suffering, that one voice can ripple outward in ways we may never fully see. Her legacy is not limited to her blog or her activism. It lives in every person who sought medical help because she urged them to listen to their bodies. It lives in every message of gratitude from someone she never met. It lives in every act of advocacy inspired by her honesty. And it lives, most profoundly, in love—a love that extends beyond family, beyond time, continuing to move outward through everyone she touched.
Often, my thoughts return to the day Deborah was born. I remember holding her tiny body, flushed and crying, convinced it was the greatest moment of my life—the beginning of everything. Decades later, holding her hand as she left this world felt like another kind of profound privilege: the chance to accompany her from first breath to last, completing a circle of devotion. “I brought my daughter into the world,” I whispered, “and I took her out of it.” It was not meant as tragedy, but as completeness—a full arc of love from beginning to end. Deborah lived vibrantly and with purpose. She died peacefully and bravely. In the space between those two moments, she poured everything she had into her family, her cause, and countless strangers she would never meet. I will spend the rest of my life honoring her work, protecting her children, amplifying her message, reminding others to trust their instincts, fight for themselves, and live boldly even when life is cruel. Deborah taught me that a life’s value is not measured in years, but in impact—in courage, in compassion, in the people you uplift, and in the love you leave behind. By those measures, her life, though heartbreakingly short, was immeasurably vast.
