Building a stairway to heaven with Deborah

After about five minutes it dawned on me that it was indeed Debbie John.

“You didn’t recognise me” were her first words as I dashed over to where she sat. Not only that but what was Debbie doing seated in the waiting area of the chemotherapy centre? She told me of her diagnosis and I promised to meet her again on those benches which is where I visited my friends. Eventually, I discovered that she was still working with the Express but from her home.

Debbie did not suffer fools gladly and called a spade a spade. She was quiet about her views though, which were sometimes conveyed barely above a whisper. She was astute and summed up an individual in the twinkling of an eye.

Debbie was a most sociable person. She liked a lime and so our friendship developed more in the social world where I could be found covering any event whatever, from the diplomatic ones to the one in a Queen Street club.

Debbie loved her family, starting with daughter Nadia, who was her pride and joy; her dad, in whose footsteps she had followed, and her mother Jeanie.

Then there were her brothers Anthony and Gregory, their wives Paula and Lydia, and most people would not know of her love and concern for her now deceased 11-year-old nephew, Paul.

A few months ago, we decided that on a future visit to St James I would meet up with her. “That’s a plan,” she said but for one reason or another it never came to fruition.

Ironically, last Tuesday morning I attended the funeral service of my friend, Jennifer Toney, the former Tranquillity Government Primary School teacher who I was visiting in St James when I met up with Debbie just over a year ago.

And on Wednesday morning I learned of Debbie’s passing.

I truly hope that we managed to complete that “stairway to heaven” for you, Debbie.

ANGELA PIDDUCK via email