...and one more Office Thing

A keepsake that sits on my desk and is very dear to me.

My name, carved into the soft wood of a fallen palm tree branch, by Sarah, a troubled but warm, funny, gifted, intelligent and sensitive young woman I knew for 10 years.

Sarah was very careful in her choice of friends, and sometimes it wasn't easy to work out why she opened up to some of us, and remained stony-faced to others. Sometimes it was quite clear, though, because she could detect "do-gooders" and pretenders with the sharpness of radar. She wrote poetry, read vocariously, and lived in the shelter of St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney. She also drank too much (but was vehemently anti-drugs) and when she became a Christian and gave up her daily cask of white wine the demons of her unhappy childhood came back and were just too much for her to handle. We only half believed her when she told us she just wanted to go and be with God who would take away all the pain, but on 3rd September 2003 she took her own life.

This little name plaque on my desk reminds me of Sarah daily - and I feel privileged to have been counted by her as a friend.