Red in 2003 with her mother, Suzanne Bailey, on Suzanne's Harley. ``Red was a real character and lived life to the full,'' says Suzanne.
Whangarei Hospital Emergency Department receptionist Suzanne Bailey lost her beloved daughter Red to cancer in January. She shares the story with Jodi Fraser.
As a 5-year-old Red marched through the door, threw her bag in the corner and declared she was not going back to school - it was for babies.
Her first day there had been a great disappointment to the self-taught reader and writer who had gone along with great expectations.
The school dream, like her dream for health and a long life, was dashed. As it turned out, in the card game of life Red was dealt a dud hand.
Red's real name was Teresa but she liked to be known as Red. As a young girl she was teased for her striking red hair and dot-to-dot freckles. But her stepfather encouraged her to own them, so Red became her name.
"She had gorgeous, thick, golden-red curls and from chemo that was the tragedy of losing it," recalls her mother, Suzanne, shaking her head sadly at the memory.
Suzanne has many painful memories of her daughter's suffering. They were close.
And that makes the blow of losing her in January all the more difficult. But, like her daughter, Suzanne has a great sense of humour and manages to chuckle infectiously throughout our chat.
"Red was a real character and lived life to the full. You just had to be with her for 10 minutes and you'd be laughing your head off, even when she was so sick."
And Red was sick.
The first sign of ill health came at age 25 when she began suffering crippling seizures. After much research it was discovered blood vessels in her brain had never properly formed and had become a tumour that grew until, by age 33, it was life threatening.
Doctors told Red she had three months to live. By that time she had been living in the United States for many years, divorced, with three children.
"I was riding my Harley across America," recalls Suzanne. "I rang her up to see what the neurologist had said and she was crying. She'd just been told, "Three months". I got a huge shock. I knew she had been having seizures but she was on the other side of the world and it was not real. Now suddenly it was."
Suzanne ended her trip of a lifetime and spent that week with her daughter.
Two months later Red was accepted for a new gamma knife programme for treating tumours.
"It was very barbaric. They had to screw a halo on to her head so that they could pinpoint exactly where the tumour was so they could put an intensive ring of gamma radiation around it. That was a horrendous day," recalls Suzanne.
"There were no guarantees after the procedure and, at that point, Red said 'If I'm going to die, I'd rather die at home. I'm a Kiwi'. So I brought her home."
Throughout her ordeal, Red's sense of humour had never waned.
Suzanne recalls visiting her one time in Seattle and being handed a cookie. "The terminal patients were given marijuana cookies and I was munching away and, after a while, said, 'I feel funny'. Red thought it was absolutely hilarious." But with the laughs came horrific times, such as when Red had a seizure in a hospital bed in Auckland with no railings.
"She fell out on to the floor and a little 80-something-year-old lady, who'd just had a hip replacement, had to struggle out of bed and go find a nurse."
However, as a result of surgery, Red's luck seemed to be changing. The tumour was shrinking and she hadn't had a seizure for a year. In 2008 she returned to the US to be with her daughters. Her eldest, Krissy, was about to have a baby.
Then came another blow when Red was diagnosed with cervical cancer. She had symptoms when she was in New Zealand but hadn't done anything about it. By the time Red went for screening, the surgeon could not help her.
After undergoing chemotherapy, she was clear for a year but the cancer came back with a vengeance. Kidney failure followed and Red was in and out of hospital for the last year of her life.
"She was trying to hang on for her daughter's wedding in August and then the brain tumour kicked back in. She had an operation to have it removed and, although the operation was successful, she never really picked up after that."
Despite that, Red made it to her eldest daughter's wedding wearing an auburn wig - much like her natural hair colour. Suzanne described the wedding as "wonderful but very emotional".
Red had also observed her grandson's first steps, and her granddaughter's first day at school.
In January this year, aged 44, Red's health dived and a broke Suzanne wondered how she would get to her.
"One of the doctors I work with said to me, 'It's only money', and I said, 'I can't do anything anyway'.
"He said, 'Yes you can. You can hold her hand'. And I thought, 'He's right'. So I got a loan."
Suzanne planned her flights for February 1 but Red's doctor sent an email advising her to get to the bedside as soon as possible.
As well, Red had just been told Krissy, her husband Ian and 5-year-old daughter MacKenna had been in a head-on car crash. Krissy had been airlifted to Reno with head injuries, MacKenna needed a CT scan and Ian was in surgery in the same hospital as Red.
During the mad dash to make it to her dying daughter's bedside, Suzanne learned the flight from Auckland was delayed for three hours, which meant missing a connecting train in the US. The next one wasn't until the next day.
"I just lost it. I was bawling my head off trying to explain to the check-in clerk that I couldn't afford to wait a day in San Francisco."
Friends' generosity came to the rescue, paying for another ticket and donating money into her account.
Friends also notified the air crew about Suzanne's situation and they gave her three seats she could lie across.
"I just lay down and went to sleep. I was exhausted. It was probably the best flight I've had."
More bad news awaited when she landed. Red's doctor had sent an email to warn Suzanne Red was now unresponsive.
"When I finally made it to the hospital I walked in and said, 'It's Mum, it's Mum'. She tried to open her eyes. I just played her music and talked to her all night.
"Next morning her daughters made it to her bedside and Krissy said, 'You can go now, Mum', and as soon as she said that she just went, and I told my granddaughters, 'Oh look at that, I have been telling her all night - she never did listen to me!"'
Krissy's husband was still in hospital, just down the corridor, his right ankle and hand badly smashed.
MacKenna's CT scan revealed she has a growth behind her heart and needed a biopsy. Krissy had to have surgery on a dislocated thumb and had a gash on her forehead.
And meanwhile, a broken-hearted Suzanne returned to New Zealand to try to carry on living.
She says her friends and co-workers' rallying around to help, their kindness and concern, has sustained her.
"It's very hard to accept that Red is gone. Red and I were always very close and all the best memories I have seem to be when I have been with her.
"It's extremely lonely and it will always be that way for me."
But she is left with photos and memories of her bubbly girl with the big brown eyes and the head of golden curls - her little girl, Red.