Clancy Hastings, my sister, died 19-05-2018.

For Clancy’s first nine years, we shared a room. The room was upstairs, looked onto a big backyard full of towering majestical old gum trees, and was filled with sunshine.

Clancy started her schooling at Montessori, Wanneroo, and ended with a Bachelor of Science in Botany from The University of Western Australia, and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Curtin University where she graduated as a registered nurse.

For the last ten years Clancy lived with treasured friends at the Kelmscott community of Richmond Wellbeing.

Through our adult years Clancy lived mostly in Perth while I lived elsewhere, though this wasn’t the only distance. Too many unsortable things had got in the way.

Yet although I strayed, Clancy kept close to the childhood laughter of the room we shared, throughout her life.

Not once was Clancy afraid while dying at Kalamunda Hospital, nor did she cry.

I found this hard until, late on the day Clancy died, I tuned-in to London just as the universe conspired to sing — in my mind — a song for Clancy, ‘Stand By Me’, that let me understand.