Have you got a best friend? Someone who you can always go to when you need a friend to talk to, someone who you have great nights out with, someone who makes you laugh so much you nearly wet yourself, someone who you've spent years and years getting to know and sharing your life with. 

Hazel was that person for me. Our kids grew up together, we shared some really great times and some really, really bad times together. We supported each other, we cried together and laughed together. 

We loved each other.

Hazel was diagnosed with cancer just a few months ago. I was with her when she got a call from the doctors saying that they had found something on a chest xray, they didn't say, but she knew, it was cancer. I tried to persuade her that it could be anything. But she knew. 

We decided to spend more time together and go out on a day trip one day a week. Our first trip was to Brighton in September. It was a lovely sunny day. I picked Hazel up in the car and we drove down, went for fish and chips and had a laugh travelling in the little tourist train along the prom. It was a great day. 

A few days later she had an appointment at the hospital to see how bad the cancer was and get some idea of prognosis and treatment. She wouldn't tell me exactly what they had said because I was just off to Brazil and San Francisco for two weeks. She didn't want me to worry while I was away. Of course I did worry. A lot.

When I came home Hazel told me that she was terminal, something that we had all dreaded, and that she was starting chemo. So we talked all about the chemo and what we would do once she was in remission. 

Many things happened from October to December, although trying desperately hard to function normally, I felt like I was in some kind of swirling black nightmare. Hazel wasn't responding well to chemo. We gradually had to face up to the fact that there wasn't going to be any remission. 

Hazel died just after Christmas only a few months after diagnosis. I am heartbroken and devastated.

But think of her poor Mum, sister and children, my pain and loss is as nothing compared to theirs.  

Hazel was such a wonderful, intelligent, funny and lively person. I miss her so much.

Please donate to Cancer Research UK in Hazel's memory so that we can help others like her to win the battle against cancer.