County Armagh woman Erin Harbinson was a kind, caring person throughout her 44 years in this world.
As a teenager she loved spending time looking after horses. As a young mum, she was utterly devoted to her four children. And as they grew older, she decided to spread her love even further by becoming a classroom assistant for special needs pupils.
She was described as ‘beautiful inside and out’ – from her flawless skin and deep, brown eyes to a heart of gold that always wanted the best for others.
It seemed incomprehensible that she could be diagnosed with advanced cancer with still so much of her life to live and so much to give.
And to then learn that the disease could have been caught and potentially stopped much sooner came as an almost unbearable injustice.
Erin learned last year that the misreading of her smear tests helped lead to the establishment of a review of cervical screening in the Southern Trust area stretching back 15 years and involving around 17,500 women.
It was a devastating discovery, one which shattered her faith in the health system.
Typically, however, even as she endured a gruelling series of treatments, Erin was thinking of others.
As part of the ‘Ladies with Letters’ group, she campaigned for answers from authorities, including meeting then minister Robin Swann.
Knowing her condition was terminal, she also gave a powerful interview to UTV earlier this year where she spoke frankly about her illness and her hope that other women would in future be spared that agony.
Her family and friends are now determined to campaign for a public inquiry in her memory to ensure that in death, as in life, she continues to change lives for the better.
Erin was the youngest of two children of Edna and the late Gerald Keenan and grew up in Lurgan and Tandragee, attending King’s Park PS and Tandragee High School.
She worked in Woolworths in Portadown and the Tayto factory in her home town, where she completed an NVQ that would lead to a career as a classroom assistant, working at Clare Primary School.
She married Trevor Harbinson in her early twenties and they were blessed with four children, Matthew (25), Liam (19), Keelan (17) and Connie (12).
Family became her whole world and they enjoyed many happy weekends together in their mobile home in Kilkeel.
When Erin collapsed with abdominal pain one day in July 2021, it seemed completely out of the blue.
Doctors saw during investigations that three routine smear tests had come back clear.
In a heart-breaking interview with UTV’s Sarah Clarke this year, Erin described the realisation that opportunities to catch her cancer had been missed as “like my world had come out from underneath me”.
However, she also expressed her determination to speak out to protect other women from suffering the same way.
“Every woman I know – my daughter, my future daughter-in-law, and all the women I work with, everybody – I’m doing this to empower you, not to frighten you,” she said.
“Unfortunately, I have to tell you the truth, and this is what has happened to me. Please learn from this.”
Erin Harbinson died peacefully at her Tandragee home on August 10. Ladies with Letters said: “There are no words to describe the wonderful woman Erin was and how she battled her illness with such dignity.”
Condolences were also expressed by health minister Mike Nesbitt and the Southern health trust, whose Cervical Cytology Review is expected to be completed next month.