Liz Gerschel: life to the full

Ester's picture smiles at me as I write. She sits above my desk and, just a year to the day older than Adam, she is the daughter I don't have, a borrowed daughter whom I loved. To know that she is not here in body fills me every day with sadness for the loss of such a bubbling and vibrant life. When I think of Ester I think of a stunningly beautiful girl, intelligent and committed and principled, someone who lived life to the full, both the passions and pains, who experienced the extremes of joy and despair and who understood this in others, their grief and loss. It seemed to me that, having been through such troubled times physically and emotionally herself, she was able to give to others by using that knowledge of life, reaching deep into herself for the empathy, compassion and deep knowledge of suffering that made her so unusual a young woman.

Ester was courageous and generous and always demanded so much of herself. When I have talked of Ester with others who knew her, I think she was known in most of the synagogues of North London. I am not surprised that she made such an impact on so many lives, so many young people, so many who loved her singing, her leadership and her dynamism. But I think that just as Ester was unique, she was also very much her mother's daughter: I believe they shared many characteristics and that Angela had a huge and positive influence on her.

When I think of Ester, I think of the passions for purple and for poetry that we shared and I smile. When she worked on her A-level English, we got into Sylvia Plath - another spirit with a gift that was greater than her strength to bear it. And when Ester was successful, she found it hard to realise that this was because she was clever and thoughtful and perceptive and she wrote extremely well, whether it was academic essays, poems or accounts of her experiences. We talked about theatre and Black literature and clothes and politics and she was fun to be with and we laughed a lot. Although I didn't see her frequently enough, we remembered each other often. I miss her enormously.