HE had played the trombone at her wedding. He played when she walked up the aisle and he played when she walked down the aisle. In her death he played for her again, but this time he walked the aisle, for Patricia Roxborough-Wright was at rest.

Where words would have failed, Calvin ‘Bubbles’ Cameron, orchestra leader for the National Pantomime and trombone player, poured his tribute into the strains of legendary hymn I Surrender All, ending the last notes at her burnished casket holding rapt hundreds of mourners who had come to pay their final respects to Roxborough-Wright — mother, wife, friend, former editor-at-large for the Observer’s Western Bureau, musician, teacher and so much more to so many.

In just under three hours, friends, family, colleagues all tried to recapture from birth to ‘rest’ 41 years of a life lived to the fullest by a woman who loved deeply, was seemingly never still and who knew no ceilings.

Yesterday, the mood inside the Church of the Open Bible on Washington Boulevard in St Andrew reflected the outside sky — gloomy one moment and cheerful the next. Poignant memories of the ‘symphony’ that was Pat evoked laughter and silent tears.

Pat’s husband, journalist Nodley Wright sat almost motionless throughout, tending only to their son Jared who seemingly had become his shadow, fully aware his mother was no more.

For the woman who gave birth to her, Mizvel Roxborough, Pat was a lesson in courage and life. That courage showed itself as early as three or four years of age when little Pat sat for several hours at school barely speaking until her mother arrived that evening because she had swallowed a fishbone.

“The doctors were surprised to know that a little girl could have spent so many hours with a bone in her throat without crying,” Mizvel said in eulogising the youngest of her three children.

The memory of that display of strength, she said, made it possible for her to understand why her daughter, though aware of her diagnosis ,”suffered silently” until it was impossible to conceal it.

“I often wondered sometimes how on earth she managed to have lived the way she did, suffering with the deadly disease of cancer…. She has left with me things that I really thought I knew before. She really reinforced them with me. She said ‘Mommy, you will never live to solve all the problems that come your way, and that is why you need to have God to solve those you can’t manage’. I am learning that lesson very well,” Mrs Roxborough said.

Professor Stephen Vasciannie, principal of the Norman Manley Law School, where Roxborough-Wright was a student at the time of her passing, said “a void” had been left “that can never and will never be filled”.

He too had deep respect for Pat’s prowess with the pen, learning her name long before he knew the bubbly woman with the endless wit, tenacity and winning smile.

“It is a painful, tragic loss… it has been a difficult time, an unexpected loss. I remain sad and numb. Pat may be gone, but she will never be forgotten,” he said, expressing regret that he would never have the opportunity to mark the final paper of candidate 163: Pat.

The Observer’s executive editor – publications, Vernon Davidson, recalled a journalist dedicated to her craft to the very last, possessed of “boundless energy and a probing mind”.

“Journalism is about bravery and Pat demonstrated courage throughout,” he said, evoking laughter with the image of Pat with her “Energiser bunny stamina” working all night to cover a story or driving the miles from Montego Bay every Wednesday morning to the Observer’s Kingston offices to oversee the printing of the Observer West and driving back in the late hours of the night, never heeding the call to slow down.

The Press Association of Jamaica, in a tribute read by journalist Erica Virtue, hailed Pat as one of the best, and “a journalist’s friend, a student and teacher of the profession”.

Lifelong friend Carol Simpson, in an anecdotal account, painted a picture of a multi-faceted and passionate comrade who kept tabs on the happenings in the lives of all her friends and would go to extremes to keep a promise or meet a need.

“Pat was an achiever… Pat was passionate… Pat’s legacy will live on in the hearts of those who knew and loved her,” she said.

But it was journalist and chairman-producer of the Little Theatre Movement Pantomime Barbara Gloudon’s humour-laced recollection of working with Pat that had the congregation more inclined to wipe tears of laughter than sorrow.

“Pat didn’t just come into a room, she bounced,” she said, recalling the countless times Pat, who was the main pianist, had “bounced” into the theatre just minutes before the curtains rose, dissipating anxiety and near anger with a chirpy “no problem, Miss G” and playing the piano with a vengeance, making all forget that she had been late.

“We all fell in love with Pat, we loved Pat, she was both cool and intense. She attacked that music as if it was in her very bones and her body so you can just imagine what it’s doing to us. All the guys in the orchestra fell in love with her.

“When the news came that Pat was going to leave us, I remember a group of us standing in a huddle in the Little Theatre yard. We couldn’t understand how a Pat could leave us and there are criminals out and about. We really couldn’t understand how someone with tremendous talent, this fantastic energy, obviously a very special gift to the world was going to go,” Gloudon said feelingly.

“She was only with the company for 10 years, but what 10 years. She didn’t just play the piano, she gave a performance. So you know how all of us in the Pantomime Company feel. We are short of one star; but one thing with theatre, the show always goes on, and tonight the curtain closes and it opens tomorrow. Pat, the curtain is closed for this performance but it is opening somewhere else. Do what we do in the theatre, a round of applause for Pat,” Gloudon ended to resounding applause.

And so it went: memories of Pat at school, “bouncing along the corridors” — her plaits dancing; Pat at work in search of the next big story; Pat at the piano, thrilling hearts; Pat wrapped up in her son Jared; Pat presenting her freshly done nails to her landlady Fay Todd for approval.

“She had the biggest smile, she was completely unfazed by anything and anyone. Pat was astute, always thinking; a good storyteller. She gave new meaning to the term multi-tasking,” high school friends Christine Bucknor and Cheryl Watkiss said.

She lived with an urgency and multi-tasked because she had an uncanny feeling that she was on loan, friend Dawn Douglas shared.

“Pat often shared she did not feel she would live to a grand old age… when I would ask why, she always said ‘these are the days of our lives, nobody promised us tomorrow’,” Douglas said of her “adventurous and funny friend” who had among her many ambitions in life being able to “walk in two-inch-high heels” one day.

Delivering the sermon, Reverend Everton Jackson, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Montego Bay where Pat had been the pianist for the children church, said that in her “relatively short time” she had made “an invaluable contribution to the shaping of society, particularly through her pen and the lenses of her camera”.

“Pat lived a full and exceptional life, she was a serious woman who never recoiled or recanted, she never gave up, gave in or compromised,” he said.

But though the tributes flowed, they had to come to an end, and at 12:58 the casket bearing Pat’s body was wheeled by pall-bearers from the sanctuary under a canopy of yellow roses held aloft by her Norman Manley Law School colleagues, followed by her husband holding their son Jared, mercifully asleep.

Also among the scores who paid their last respects were Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn and Public Defender Earl Witter.