It has been really touching and moving to read through these tributes to Sue. Grief tends to come in waves and whenever I have felt really low, reading through these posts has genuinely helped. I also received a thank you from a member of her family, for the lovely sentiments that have been expressed here.
Last night I uploaded one of Sue?s unpublished papers to the site, with an introduction about the details of its publication (
www.skyscript.co.uk/snc.html ). I think that the comment at the end of my introduction, illustrating how Sue battled to have the right to express her respect for astrology, is a telling statement on why her commitment to astrology was so very special.
Because I know that Sue would not have considered it morbid (but would have been bursting to point it out), I also want to make a couple of comments about the timing and astrology of her death. I have not looked at more than the obvious transits, but anyone who knows her chart (on p.1 of this thread) knows how much Saturn predominated in influence.
Sue complained of feeling unwell and subsequently collapsed around 10:00 pm on 10th Feb at Armidale NSW. The Sun was within a few minutes of its opposition to retrograde Saturn at 21 Leo, Saturn itself was transiting the degree of Sue?s 8th house cusp, whilst the opposing Sun ruled it. The Moon at 21 Scorpio, was exactly square the Sun-Saturn opposition afflicting her 8th house cusp.
In addition, transiting Mars (which sits natally in Sue?s 6th house) was at 18 Capricorn, within 1 degree of Sue?s natal Sun-Mercury conjunction, so afflicting the significator of her vitality and the ruler of her 6th house of illness. (It was also of course just a couple of degrees from her natal Saturn). This is a very powerful signature of a moment of bodily crisis. She remained unconscious until she died around 4:00am the following morning. At that time Saturn (opposed by the Sun) was still in the 8th house but Mars had become angular and was within a degree of the ascendant at her locality.
As for the cause of her death, her family believe that it was the indirect result of radiation treatment that saved her life many years before. Without going into too many details Sue was lucky not to have died when she was 25 and she was aware that in many ways she was living on borrowed time. Because Sue had proved herself virtually indestructible in her resistance to all the many problems that could have ?finished her off?, it still came as a great shock; but the reality is that Sue had stretched her natural life-span to the absolute limit of what she ought reasonably to have expected. I am feeling calmer as this realization settles in, and after reading some of the words in the reading at her funeral service, which I think she would have loved:
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
As the grief passes I am remembering Sue as not only as the truly sincere person that she was (yes she was, but she would have squirmed at reminders of it), but also as the pragmatic, down-to-earth, dry-witted champion of ?cutting the crap? ? the side to her that I really loved and admired. She was independently minded, full of opinion, and she had a wonderfully mischievous sense of humour that always managed to whisper the most irreverently funny (but realistic) observation of what was really going on in superficial or pompous situations. At a personal level it is this, more than anything, that I will miss.
For those of us who would have liked to have been at her funeral and were not able to be - below is a poem from the booklet distributed at her funeral as a celebration of her life. There is something very appropriate about this poem. She would have felt so honoured by the testimonies in this thread, but this poem has the sort of ?thanks, but now get on with it? attitude that was so typical of her character.
When I come to the end of the road,
and the sun has set for me.
I want no rites in a gloom filled room,
why cry for a soul set free?
Miss me a little but not too long,
and not with your head bowed low.
Remember the love we once shared,
miss me, but let me go.
For this is a journey we all must take,
and each must go alone.
It is all a part of the Master Plan,
a step on the road to home.
When you are lonely and sick of heart,
go to the friends we know.
Laugh at all the things we used to do,
miss me, but let me go.