Lena and I met when I joined her to study Russian at Birmingham University in 1964. Madeline’s thoughts on Neruda’s poem led me to recall a passage from the novel Dr Zhivago by Pasternak ( we both read it at uni). Zhivago comforts a fearful patient “Your consciousness is you in others; you have always been in others and you will remain in others" and” there is no death in this sense”. Lena may have died, but lives on not just in our remembrance, but in the kind and caring way she lived , which in her quiet way created love and joy surrounding her and spread it , for everyone who knew her. Another friend mentioned Lena “dancing with gay abandon”, that is the Lena I will remember, living life to the full and living it well. From Bet