Community mourns as brave Rosie loses cancer battle

The community has rallied round the family of a young mother who died on Tuesday, after a year in which she blogged about her fight against cancer.

Only days earlier, Rosemary Choueka (Rosie) had readers in tears with a heart-wrenching “final post” in her inspirational blog, ‘Fighting Genghis.’

On Tuesday, her husband Elliot wrote: “It is with great, unbearable sadness that I announce the passing away of Rosie Sara Choueka (nee Kalman) at 8.30am today.”

He said: “She was a great woman, mother, daughter, wife but above all the best friend I ever had… A great flame was snuffed out, but her light lives on in all our hearts and in our beautiful children, Natalie and Joseph.”

Friends, family members as well as complete strangers went online to post a picture of a rose in her memory.

Public awareness came after the brave and much-loved mother and solicitor decided to use a blog to chronicle her battle with breast cancer since diagnosis in June last year.

Following chemotherapy, she was told that the cancer had returned and spread to her liver. A recent family holiday led to an infection, which she described as “the straw that broke the camel’s back”.

Londoner Choueka, a partner in competition law at City law firm Bristows, who was in her 30s, last week wrote that she was “declining swiftly”.

She said: “There are now only palliative options for me. I hope there will be a degree of peace and a pain-free environment there for me.”

People from around the world posted messages of support, with readers as far away as Israel, Australia and the United States adding words of comfort. An Israel teacher asked for Rosie’s Hebrew name (Chaya Rahel bat Masha) so her class could pray for her.

She recently described how, “like many of my tribe, I’ve always been a teeny bit obsessed by what normal people call the births, marriages and deaths section, but what I know as hatched, matched and dispatched”.

She recalled how she “started to read the tributes in the dispatched columns. It was fascinating to piece together a life from the snippets in the notices. Old age and death felt far away at that point”.

Rosie’s husband Elliot said he would revisit the blog “at an appropriate point” in the future, saying: “I will try to convey some of my thoughts about Rosie and her desire to establish a charity in her memory.”

• A Just Giving page raising money in Rosie’s name – for Marie Curie Hospice, Hampstead, who rely solely on charitable donations can be found by clicking here.