R.I.P. Elizabeth Miles

R.I.P. Elizabeth Miles. My heart is breaking. A lovely old friend has passed away. Elizabeth Miles, founding director and chairman of Iken, passed away last weekend.

My friend, Brain Inkster, just told me. He wrote a beautiful post about Elizabeth. I quote: “Elizabeth was one of my very early connections on Twitter – way back in the pioneering days of 2009. She was an active participant in the Virtual Twitter Parties organised by Chris Sherliker.”

Elizabeth was also one of my first followers on Twitter. We tweeted a lot about dealing with elderly parents, the role of women and girls in the world, human rights and yes, Chris’ virtual parties kept us at Twitter for hours.

Elizabeth never knew that she was talking to me on two different accounts. She never knew that I was also talking to her under my pen name “Vidocq” about unsolved homicides. One of the cases that really touched her was the case of Moira Holly Branagan and she contributed her thoughts generously.

Despite leading a very busy life, Elizabeth found the time to care about her aging mother and there too, we bonded. I lost my father and lately my mother-in-law. Elizabeth was there. She understood Alzheimer’s and the changing relationship. I only had to say a few words and she understood the full sentence.

Here is an interview I did with Elizabeth for my series “Vidocq presents …!” I’d like to close with one of her favourite poems by Robert Frost: “The Road Not Taken.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

You made all the difference, Elizabeth. I will miss you.