The easiset thing I have ever done in my life was include Sara as one of the international stars of the 1988 Variety Club SHOW OF HEARTS. THe hardest is writing this. I always knew the day would come, the Taylor family could easily be described as forthright and they aren't big on secrets. I recorded Sara singing "Poems, Prayers and Promises" against the eventuality of this moment. But there is no way of preparing to lose such a vital life force as Sara Taylor-Gibson. The world must hesitat for a brief moment. The loss too large to absorb all at once.

Pat asked that I recall her time on the SHOW OF HEARTS and, taking my life in my hands here, I don't actually want to. I think if you see the documentary you will see others, who are more eloquent than I, do a superb job of telling that story. But there is something I would like to say. And so, with some trepidation, I am igrnoring "the mother" just this once in order to say what I have wanted to say since I was included on this fantastic journey. And perhaps Pat you will understand that it all rerlates to what you aked of me. In that what I am about to say I learned while making the film SARA'S STORY.

SARA'S STORY was filmed over two years, almost from the moment the cancer was discovered. And in over 40 hours of footage and interviews; watching and recording both Sara and those she loved, I kept hearing how strong Sara was.

Well, I never saw that.

What I saw was a life force more brilliant and bright than I can possibly describe. A life force burning with an incandescent beauty that could take your breath away. But to burn with that intensity, to love as she did with such strength and passion, to be able to entertain and to captivate anyone and everyone she met, to feel as deeply and strongly as she felt about everything - well, that comes with a price. She felt her cancer with enormous intensity. That's not to say she was weak or that she was not brave - she was anything but weak and she was one of the bravest people I have ever met. But like the space shuttle, she needed help in order to soar. Sara had wonderful gifts that most of us can only dream about - but she was not strong.

You were.

You, her family are the most inspiring, most courageous and most inspirational people I have ever met in my life. Everyone's family should be as powerful as yours. I saw you Jenny, Jeorg, Michael, Lee, Pat and Brad, I saw you as the calm, vast ocean of love that surrounded her every need. An ocean with depths and shallows, light and dark. With patterns and tides and colours and life beyond caring for Sara. But never away from her and supporting her abd bathing her in the warmth of affection and touch and concern. Nothing was too hard, no challenge went unmet.

Not that you ever claimed to me or anyone I know that you were perfevt. But that's the thing. Knowing that perfect is unachievable made you stronger still. You fought and loved with equal intensity and never let anger colour your affection for each other. It is what Sara prized in you most. That you loved each other well. And no finer thing can be said of anyone.

And Sara loved you with a passion and an intensity that might have overwhealmed a lesser group of people. But you took it in stride and never stopped loving her, in just the right way, for all of her wonderful life. too short, absolutely. But never let that take away from the quality of her life. She knew more love in her short lifetime than most of us will ever receive.

And it is the intensity of her love, reflected and absorbed by the passionate family she was born, into that I will always use to describe her. Because I believe that all things must die in their own time. Except love. I believe that love continues after death. Somehow.

So each time someone gets on a horse at Precipice or climbs the side hill, I believe Sara lives on.

Each time you gather as a family; each Autumn with the golden leaves, each Spring with the new hay, each Winter wit hthe first snow, Sara lives on.

In your immense and powerful heart Brad, in your musiv Michael, in your calm strength Lee, in your passion and poetry Pat, in the eyes of your children Jenny, Sara will live on . . . as you must - loving each other with patience and understanding as you deal with the tremendous loss, each in your own individual manner.

Until the day that it is okay to stop crying.

You see, you taught Sara that love can conquer anything. So Sara is going to be watching you heal yourselves. For your sake. For her sake. She expects no less.

She loved each of you so much. And each of you gave her so much joy. I am, we all are, humbled by the sheer beauty of it.

And if, as years pass, you need to find meaning in her life or meaning in her death, them I would suggest it is to be faund in this statement:

You loved Sara and Sara loved you; in that you have known perfection.

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