A REFLECTION on Friday, September 30, a warm summer-like morning and the day we said goodbye to Zoe Peterssen. After alighting from the bus in High Street and a brisk walk down the Turl into the Broad, I hurriedly crossed St Giles. It was the funeral, at Pusey House, of dear Zoe Peterssen and I did not want to be late.

Zoe was known to many as the lady who draws trees, which were unique, in Christ Church Meadow, where she would sit and spend many hours at peace with nature and capture its surrounding beauty.

Pusey House Chapel was nearly full of people, who, like me, had come to say goodbye to a dear lady.

The service was beautiful, the chapel filled with incense and shafts of sunlight all around. There was a Mass and readings, hymns and then a poignant address by Father Orford about Zoe’s life and time spent at Pusey House, where she lived the final years of her life as ‘artist-in-residence’.

I am sure if Zoe were looking down, she would have said: “Darlings – all this for me, but why?”

She was such an outgoing person yet very private and introvert.

As the service ended, we said our goodbyes to Zoe. As the hearse left the West Gate, the sun shone, and clear blue skies and whistling of birds in a nearby tree sent Zoe off on her final journey: a friend and an enigma, now gone on to a higher echelon. God bless her.

PATRICIA PENDERS WHITE, Peat Moors, Headington