In loving memory of Wendy Buckner, 1959-2010

Wendy died yesterday shortly after completing the Flowers Sea Swim. To the best of our knowledge, she swam fast and strong, but came out of the water with blue lips and breathing very shallowly. She was conscious and responsive as she was taken to the medical tent, but her vital signs were dropping. Brent rode in the front of the ambulance that took her to hospital. She experienced cardiac arrest en route, and attempts to resuscitate her at the hospital were unsuccessful.

An expression that Wendy and I shared: "swimming the Pyrenees," for anything extraordinary and above and beyond what one might imagine possible, things that stretch the human soul. Wendy's life was devoted to swimming the Pyrenees, in ways small and large. (Implausibly, she and I spent Thursday evening participating as 2/375ths - the number is approximate!- of an attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for World's Largest Bikini Parade, something only Wendy could have persuaded me to do - it was a fundraiser for the Cayman Islands Amateur Swimming Association!)

Words fail me when I think about how she will be missed. Instead: an old picture from Wendy's lovely blog, which has given me any amount of delight over the years I have been lucky enough to bask in her friendship.