Nicola - our daughter, Michaels’ sister, our grand-daughter, our niece, our cousin, our
student, our friend - lived a rich and varied life.

Nicola touched many, many people in her twenty three years. It seems a short time. It is a short time in comparison to the span of other lives, but this did not limit or diminish her influence on the world. Nicola’s presence radiated through her home and her community and outward to places far and wide. Just look around this church today. Her life, her unique gifts, her wordless love, is what has brought us all here today. We are a group that, were it not for Nicola, would probably never have come together in quite this way. There are people here who would never have crossed paths were it not for Nicola.

Nicola’s network of loving friends and family stretches across Europe and beyond. Nicola has forged loving bonds of friendship with 25 young women who came from Spain, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Romania, Poland and Britain to help care for and support her throughout her life. Many of you are here today, and I think you would all agree it has been a life changing and positive experience leading to new opportunities of learning, career development, relationships and personal growth.

Nicola developed a special bond with Jo and Sam. Twin sisters who overcame some of their own challenges out of a commitment to Nicola. In their unique friendship they did
not judge each other, just simply accepting who they were. Jo and Sam regularly joined in Easter egg hunts, sharing the pleasure of this simple experience.

Our own Flexford project came together out of a wish to provide a supporting extended home for Nicola,growing up surrounded by her family and with scope to have live-in carers. Out of this have come other benefits too, such as support for older family members and a depth of understanding of each other, harking back to a time when it was more usual for extended family to live together.

Outside of the home, Portesbery School was the biggest part of her life up to the age of 19. Through Nicola we were introduced to a talented team of teachers and other professionals who helped us better understand her needs. In part this was also
Nicola’s world where she could experience the world away from her family. We kept in touch through the daily home-school diary, parents meetings and school events. We felt part of the Portesbery community.

Portesbery was a hard act to follow but at the Harbour in Milford Nicola found a new welcome and new friends. She also had more independence with a car of her own and a
personal assistant to support her in accessing the world.

Being in the water was one of her greatest pleasures, shrieks of sheer delight would emanate from her bathroom flowing down the corridor filling the house with her joy. The
swimming pool was the centre piece of Nicola’s annual visits to France, Spain or Portugal. The house-with-pool formula enabling Nicola to have several sessions each day sharing her obvious delight with one or more supporters in the pool. A watchful eye was always maintained from dry land to ensure no mishaps but as it turned out it was Grandad who needed to be rescued from the pool.

On one occasion in Portugal our ambition for Nicola’s pleasure with water led us to visit the Atlantic coast where with a team of five helpers we waded through the waves breaking on the beach and immersed poor Nicola in the icy rollers. The expression on her face is one we will all be familiar with: a mix of shock and horror at the cold, but swiftly followed by blissful delight on experiencing the buoyancy that freed her from the constraints of her wheelchair. Nicola’s enjoyment and ours was short-lived as we were severely told off by the lifeguard for being so irresponsible and we retreated to the warmth and safety of the beach.

Out of the water, another favourite activity was the sensation of travelling across bumpy
surfaces in her wheelchair or all-terrain buggy. Nicola was a regular visitor to Guildford High Street where the cobbled high street was a source of delight, as were the many buskers, especially those playing clarinet or saxophone. As always the pleasure she took in these simple experiences was shared with others and it was clear that in her reaction that she brightened the days of many of the people around her – the buskers, the market stall-holders and passers-by.

As parents, Nicola taught us about patience and perseverance and strength. She taught us about the value of each human life and what really matters in any life. In a world where fashion and fad and products and gadgets seem to dominate the definition of
value and worth, Nicola quietly offered another perspective. Sitting with her at home in all of her simplicity and beauty we learned that those things don’t really matter at all. What matters are our human connections. What matters is the cultivation of our closest loving relationships. What matters is the daily performance of our common humanity. That is what Nicola has taught us.

And Nicola changed us. She will have a lasting impact on us. For those who knew her well, but did not have as much time with her as those closest to her, the changes she wrought may be rather more subtle but powerful in their own way. She is there inside of
us. Perhaps one day you will see a young women in a wheelchair, a purple wheelchair pushed by a loving mother, and an image of Nicola will flash in your mind and a warm wave of recognition and remembrance will wash across your heart. Or maybe you will hear the name “Nicola” and a hundred memories will leap to mind.

For Michael and her cousins who grew up with her, Nicola did not so much change their lives as shape them from the very beginning. She is part of the stuff of their being, a
daily expression of the marvellous diversity of humanity that they have become
accustomed to.

For Christina and Toby, and those others closest to Nicola, it is safe to say we are not now what we had been before she was born. We have grown in ways we could never have imagined. We have become something more than we were. Her love for us and our love for her has magnified us.

She has changed us fundamentally for the better. This is not merely a matter of memory, though we will remember her; it is something deep within the pulse of our lives.

And in those changes she brought to us and the world around her, in the love she inspired and absorbed , she lives. She lives in me; she lives in you; she lives in all
of us.