Nicola Morris - died 2008

Nicola spent most of her short life in foster care or in a Children's Home and she died aged 21 with only a few friends and colleagues to mourn her passing.

I have the thank-you letter, enclosing a photo, sent by Nichola’s last pair of foster parents to Ella and me the week after the funeral. They sent it c/o the Children’s Home because they didn’t have an address for us. It seems as if Nichola had kept in touch with her foster parents for the last few years of her life. In the letter they told us that Nichola had gone into hospital for minor elective surgery and the wound had got infected with MRSA. When Nichola (finally) told them how ill she was they had driven over to see her and they visited her every day from then until she died.

I have since been in touch with Nicola's final set of foster parents. They are still living at the same address. They were very pleased to hear Ella and I still visit her grave. They have had lots of foster children since Nicola but they still remember her. “She was an artistic girl and we still have one of her pictures in the house. Nichola never settled down to life in our small village and after a few months everybody agreed it would be best for her placement to be ended. Every foster parent dreads one of their former children dying and we are so glad it has only happened to us once.”

E&E (1st July 2014)

Baby Nicola is named after our friend. We recently got a lovely surprise in the form of cheque for £500 from Nicola's last set of foster parents. We have kept in touch with them over the years and they wanted to pass on to us the money that Nicola had left them in her will. When Nicola realised she was dying she wrote a will that was witnessed by hospital staff. She divided the little she had into 3 pieces and her last foster parents had this one third they have now passed on to us. Another third purchased benches for outside the supermarket where she had worked and one third went to buy games and toys for the Childrens Home that she (and Ella and I of course) had attended.