Blog post #13 - My Friend Sarah

VALE my beautiful friend Sarah Martin (née Locke) 1/8/56- 27/3/23

Mostly friendless as they were, my school days weren’t my favourites. But the lucky last experience of them served up Sarah; the wittiest, most brilliant, funniest pal to knock about with.

​In truth our paths overlapped only briefly. She, being of high academic stripe was in the Latin stream and I, relegated to the nuffy one which did “Environmental Studies.”
I didn’t turn up at that school until well into second year high school and she was moved on to a boarding school at the end of the third.
So yes, only eighteen months to form a bond which began in the school choir then flourished in youth clubs and sleepovers.

I said she was brilliant. Beyond the incomprehensible Latin, she sang, played cello, guitar and piano with easy facility and pretty much everything on the curriculum was a breeze for her.
She knew long words - lots of them! Crosswords were a snack! Going for a walk with her was a lesson in botany, geography and history well beyond anything any hallowed halls of learning had to offer.
Fun-loving and bubbly, she was a favourite with my family too and continued to be so over the years, always troubling to visit our little old darlings as they aged, who were much brightened by her visits. She undertook the four hour round trip for both their funerals, bless her dear, lovely heart.
Her own family were wealthy, but rather austere adherents of the Plymouth Brethren, I believe it was.
“Father” - and he was always that; had great expectations for his brilliant daughter and tipped her for being the lawyer of the family.
Because they were wealthy Sarah had no hope of receiving a county grant and Mr Locke would only support Law as a study choice.

To be honest whilst she could have knocked over a law degree in a blink; being bound to musty tomes for a few years didn’t really have any appeal for her.
Supported by Father, she did dabble with legal studies, but never completed her degree. She dipped in and out several times doing this and that, including a stint teaching in war torn Beirut, returning to a few thankless jobs in drab old London, staying with me and my then husband.
As with us all at that time, she married young.
It was far from happy and she ended up bundling her baby Mary into the car and doing a midnight flit for fear of her baby’s and her own safety. She lived in that car for many, many weeks, strapped for cash and scared of putting down roots in case she and Mary might be found.
By this time I was in Australia and for years I seldom could afford trips back home. Sarah wasn’t a regular correspondent I have to say, but when she did put pen to paper she was gifted as a writer too. For despite the terrible trials of homelessness, penury and the rebuilding of her life several times over; her letters were full of witty twists on those situations. You could be reading the most awful stories yet howling with laughter.

We did catch up when I was over and of course you’ve guessed by now that we just picked up where we left off, as though we had merely been in different rooms of the same house.

She was a brilliant home maker. On a shoestring, she managed to create a warm welcome into her many homes, most of which were wreckage of cottages salvaged from demolition and many out in the sticks of Dartmoor where she lived from the 90s.
Here she married again and had her son Sam. Sadly, that marriage too didn’t work out.
But Dartmoor was her “place.” She rekindled her love of nature in that wild and rugged terrain and conducted walking tours across the length and breadth of those gaunt tors and deep bouldered gullies of rushing crystal streams. Recalling our early walks, those visitors most certainly had a gold class experience in her fleeced and sturdy footed company.
At this time she ironically went into Law, becoming a Magistrate and also, rediscovered music, finding a passion for opera which she travelled the country and the world to see. Oh, and she kept sheep, of course she did! and learnt to play the flute too during this period.
In more recent years she trained as a nurse specialising in palliative care. Despite having a very difficult relationship with her father, she joining her mother to nurse him through his agonising cancer to the end was something she didn’t think twice about doing.
She mourned him deeply too.
In 2020, hers was the first hand up to go into the Covid wards.
Sarah found the 21st century difficult to navigate. In her latter years she walked hand in hand with depression. There was much latent hurt and dismay in her life’s experiences and her lack of a soul-mate was a source of sorrow too. Suitors a-plenty, but she never could get that bit quite right in her life.
But it was up on her beloved Dartmoor that she took a tumble last week, sustaining serious injuries from which there was to be no return. She had made her wishes about this situation clear to Mary, Sam and her wonderful friend, Louise. She and I had many conversations about how we wished our end to be; to exit on our own terms with our dignity intact.
She was lucid at the end and reiterated this wish in full knowledge of what she was asking of her children, her friends and the medical team.

I have loved this friend of my heart so very dearly.
My sorrow is deep and time will have its healing properties tested over the loss of this wonderful person, whose golden thread of a story has been so intricately woven with my own.
To find her end resulting from one last walk on Dartmoor was fitting though.
For it was there, where she was at one with nature, that she found peace.

My love to Mary, Sam and her wonderful friend Louise and all who knew her and loved her as I have done.
She will surely rest in my heart forever.
Bless you, my darling Sare.
Loved forever by me and the many now contemplating life without you walking this earth.
​Kxx

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