I said goodbye to someone I much admired yesterday. I don't know when I'll see her again, but I'm absolutely certain I will. She had a great gift of being extraordinary, but seeming ordinary. Approachable enough to be friends with anyone. Wise and skilful enough to make friends with people whose language you would never have thought she could speak: from bishops and politicians, to single parents and immigrants.
I once asked her how many children she'd got, and she struggled to give me an answer. Not least because of the two Albanians who became part of her family, but also because she could be mother to thousands. How could she count the number of people she cared about as a mother cares for her children?
I was always a little in awe of Sue. I was in awe of the problems she dealt with, any one of which would have floored me, yet she juggled many of them simultaneously. I was in awe of her energy, spending all day every day making lives better all around her. Yet to be with her and talk to her was the easiest thing in the world.
The first time she invited me and my family for a meal, she said "we haven't actually got a kitchen at the moment ..." and cheerfully showed me the hole where her kitchen was going to be - currently lacking a floor, as well as anything to cook with. But there was a row of slow cookers on a table, and a delicious meal taking shape inside them. I can't remember how many people she fed that day, with no kitchen, But I soon realised this was nothing unusual. This is what Dave, her husband did. He didn't just redecorate, he rebuilt.
The last Balkan war was a terrible thing. Countries that had co-existed for 50 years or more divided and religious or ethnic lines, families were ripped apart and neighbours took up arms and began systematically butchering each other. And some fled - including a teenage boy who made his way to this country. An email went round the churches, asking if anyone could give a home to a traumatised youth whose foster care arrangements had broken down. I had a phone call the same day, asking if I could help. Another problem beyond my ability to deal with, so I phoned Sue. The next I knew, she had taken him in, and Valdet became her son. She fought for him to stay in this country, even though the Home Office seemed to have decided that he would be sent back home and I actually thought it would be best for Sue to accept the inevitable. She wouldn't accept it, and in the end his case was won, and he stayed. Later, another miracle occurred, and he found his mother alive, after years of searching. "Now I have two mothers," he said.
Diagnosed with liver cancer three years ago, Sue should have died quickly, but somehow she managed to sustain course after course of chemotherapy, keeping active despite a raft of side effects. Although I had moved away and no longer saw her in person, she kept in touch, bothering to contact me by phone or online.
Finally I heard that she had died, and yesterday I went to say goodbye.
No, not to say goodbye. Because Sue and I share one unshakeable belief - the hope that this life is not the only one there is, but that heaven is not a dream or a fantasy but a reality in which no good thing will be lost. She had a firm faith in Jesus Christ, as do I, and would tell anyone who asked what it was about. She would never preach - that wasn't her style - but if you wanted to know, she would enlighten you. And being around Sue for a while made you want to know. How did she do it? How could she do it?
She loved, because God first loved her. And so her funeral yesterday wasn't a farewell, it truly was au revoir, Sue Riddlestone.
