Warminster teacher loses her battle with cancer (From This Is Wiltshire)

Warminster teacher loses her battle with cancer

8:30am Friday 13th November 2009

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Staff and pupils at a Warminster school have been devastated by the death of teacher Sarah Todman, who lost her fight against breast cancer.

Mother-of-two Mrs Todman, 35, had been a music teacher at Kingdown School for 12 years.

School headteacher Sheelagh Brown paid tribute to Mrs Todman as a popular and talented teacher who had risen through the ranks of the school from a young graduate to a head of department.

She said: “Sarah was just the nicest person, always smiling, always calm and very kind. She would never raise her voice but her classes were always well ordered.

“When she came to us she had just got married and finished university so in the last 12 years we have seen her grow up and have babies and become the head of a department.

“Her teaching journey has been very much the Kingdown journey.”

Mrs Todman’s husband Clover has told friends of his beloved wife’s last weekend in a moving online diary.

He wrote: “Whilst I am devastated by the suddenness of all this I am grateful that Sarah never had any idea that her time was so short. Any suffering she endured at the end was short-lived, which was a tender mercy.”

He described how Mrs Todman’s 18-month battle with breast cancer came to an end on October 27.

He wrote: “Until hours before the end, even I had no idea that her condition was quite so grave.”

“But even if she had known the path ahead she did not fear death. Any concern she ever expressed was only for our girls and for me.”

About 25 staff and pupils from Kingdown attended her funeral service at Widcombe Baptist Church in Bath on Thursday, where Mrs Todman was an enthusiastic member of the congregation.

Mrs Brown said “Clover was amazing in church. He opened the ceremony and spoke. It was just so moving. He was obviously just devastated but he feels very much that she is with God and he will see her again.

“She is a huge loss to us. We were just devastated by the news.

“She had her first little girl Jasmine and then two years later she had her second little girl and it was when she was breastfeeding her that she noticed a lump in her chest.”

Mrs Todman had been in and out of school for the last 18 months while undergoing therapy that everyone believed would be successful in beating her cancer.

Mrs Brown said: “We were all arranging for her to come back to school but then just as we thought she was coming back she discovered it was back.

“She went through the whole thing again but this time it didn’t cure it so it had obviously spread.

“It has just been dreadful for all of us. We have all just been asking, why, why her?”

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