Spring flowers for Vera Dorn aka Veraluna

I am very sad today because I have found out that lovely Veraluna suffered a fatal heart attack on January the 7th. She last posted on Blip on Jan 6th, she was visiting friends in Moscow with her family, her last entry is called 'Magic Night'.

I have been writing to her via email, on here and on Instragram trying to find out what happened as everything seemed to have stopped on Dec 6… over the weekend I searched online and eventually wrote to some of her more frequent commenters on Instagram (Vera's IG account is here). Her last entry on there is titled 'Got a little lost' and is a beautiful photo of a snowy avenue.

Via Instagram her friend Michael Schwarzkopf very kindly wrote to me this morning, he is the new protestant minister of the German St. Peter's church in the City centre of St Pete and has become very good friends with the family and they spent last Christmas together. He says that once a week he now spends an afternoon with Vera's children Nina (9), Uliana (6) and Emma (5) which is comforting to know. Here they are in their saris, they had recently been to India and Vera was planning another trip.

I was first drawn to Vera's Russian blips as I go there quite a bit, she lived in St Petersburg with her Russian Husband who is a photographer, although Vera was actually from Germany originally, here is a blip of hers where she is watching the blip movie about me with one of her daughters which I really love, after being friends online for some months I met her on Dec 7th exactly one month before her passing as it turns out. She came to my concert and we sat and had a drink afterwards and chatted for some time.

I was really struck by her intelligence, her free spirit and lust for life, she was a translator being fluent in German, Russian and English, she played the Saxophone and was a soulful photographer who loved the Arts. Here is a video of Vera playing Saxophone, she is the girl on the right in the white shirt. I was very impressed that she was home schooling her 3 beautiful daughters. I just can't believe it, such a tragedy for her Husband and children.

I'm glad they have all her wonderful photos and videos to look back on as well as her Blip journal, something good to come from the time we are living in.

None of us knows how long we have…. or when or how the end will be, this is a stark reminder to me to cherish the moment. I went to the park on my bike and walked around the woodland gardens thinking about Vera and took this photo in her memory.

Rest in Peace dear Vera, my life is enriched from having known you, you are much loved and much missed.

xxxxx

edit
Just LOVE this photo of us at my gig in St Pete, we look triumphant, it was a fantastic night and I'm so glad we met.