Rebecca’s story

by Esther Hubble (sister)

Rebecca Buckell was born in Bournemouth, she was a glamorous career woman who loved working in retail it was her passion, she was a manager at River Island and Monsoon and had a great life. She travelled the world enjoying great holidays with her husband Dave, before having her children, 2 lovely little boys. Her family life was her whole world along with her husband Dave. She started to get back ache in the May 2018 and assumed it was from picking up the boys all the time but she started to be in a lot of pain and started to lose a lot of weight very quickly and couldn’t eat and was in hospital before you knew it, they originally thought it was kidney stones. The day she was diagnosed it was the 18th June, 5 days before my wedding where she was due to be my bridesmaid. I was with her when she was told and it’s the day when all our worlds were forever changed, we were devastated she had bile duct cancer and they couldn’t remove it.

Then it all moved very quickly after that and within a few days we were told it was terminal and she might have only up to 6 months to a year to live. She quickly became very poorly at the hospital and was given just to 2 weeks to live, I can’t even put into words how brave she truly was and that’s when she made the decision to go to Forest Holme for her end of life care. As soon as we got there her first words were ‘Oh my god this is a hotel look at my bathroom’ she was so happy to be there, it was quiet, it was peaceful and there was so much sunlight and it was a place where her boys could run around and spend quality time with her having ice creams in the outside area. In those last 2 weeks the staff were beyond incredible they helped us as a family in every way possible and more. Rebecca wanted someone with her all time and Forest Holme were amazing at accommodating us as a family we will always be thankful to them for being there for her and for us in her last few days when she was scared and would cry that she didn’t want to die they were saying and doing everything that would put her at ease.

Rebecca sadly died August 6th, 2018 she was 37 years old leaving behind her young boys, husband and her loving brother, sister and mum and her closet friends, Rebecca had an incredible funeral with over 200 people there to pay their respects she was loved by everyone. Me and some of Rebecca’s friends raised over £2000 for forest Holme by doing the trek over Swanage. We have also done bingo, red yellow tie event and the light up walk for forest Holme, Accessorize were my sister worked part time have also raised £1257 and through my work at Nationwide we have also raised money for dress down days and we got to decorate forest Holme at Christmas time, the work forest Holme do is priceless.

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