I didn’t know Sara and Lily, but I followed their story from afar​on February 7, 2025 at 6:30 pm

It is possible to love someone from afar for many years. This is how I felt about Sara Tindley. She was a local musician and I was a fan of her music. We both lived in the same region, so I attended many gigs. I felt I knew her, though we never met. As a fan, I watched her traverse cancer treatment. I once saw her play at the Mullumbimby Bowlo, gaunt, scarf wrapped around her head, somewhere in the midst of chemo. She brought the audience along. That was many years ago. Her performance was so vibrant, I never saw death knocking.

We had friends in common, I heard she read my books. Occasionally, we exchanged words on socials. Sometimes we agreed we should meet up and have a cuppa. Life is busy, time flies. We never spoke in the flesh.

Sara’s eldest daughter, Lily, had starred in a movie with John Hurt when she was 12. This was big news in small town northern NSW. Years later, I still recognised her as a teen kicking around town. A year older than my firstborn. I didn’t know Lily either, but felt she was destined for great things. A friend and I wrote a screenplay and we held her in our mind’s eye: our imaginary lead. It’s my way to fix on a familiar stranger and build a narrative. Lily was a bright light. Whenever I caught sight of her, my brain fizzed with possibilities. Some people are walking luminescence.

In late 2021, during the pandemic, Sara posted a picture of Lily on Instagram. At first glance it looked like an album cover and my brain jumped to conclusions. She’s written a bunch of songs! I geared up to cheer this venture on from the sidelines. Reading the caption, I began to feel a kind of lag. Why did the album cover have two dates on it? 24.09.1996 – 19.10.2021. That freefall feeling in the pit of my stomach. I tried to understand the words below the picture. My first true love has left this earthly plane. This was not the story. It couldn’t be.

I didn’t know Sara or Lily, but I knew this story. My teenage sister had taken her life when I was 12. Grief so big it is uncontainable. Where, in our culture, was there space for such feelings? Where did any of it go?

A year later, Sara released an album, Greetings from St Clair. Our whole region was still reeling from catastrophic flooding. Sara held the album launch in Lismore, the very heart of the devastation. Walking through the boarded-up shops to get to the venue felt prescient. I was shaking before I even got inside. What does it feel like to share such grief with your townsfolk? What does it feel like for this grief to be held?

The venue was packed; hundreds of people. I was astonished by the crowd. So many humans willing to hear. I was crying before the show even started. Out came Sara in a baby-blue suit, ravaged-looking like our town. Her band, a team of local and interstate musos, seemed to vibrate with emotion. They struck a note and the sound felt huge. Music, it turns out, can hold the biggest of feelings. That joining of notes, that coming together. Sara’s grief, the town’s devastation. All of us, in one room, riding a wave. I’d never felt anything so dense and full.

Two months later, Sara died. I learned it on socials. Musician after musician posting their love. I hadn’t known she was sick; the cancer returned. The concert, the album, a kind of goodbye. I thought of her band, holding her in such a fragile state. I thought of the vibrating emotion of that room. I thought of her sharing it all with us. A final gift.

It’s nearly two years since Sara’s death, but there is a new posthumous album. A collection of home recordings of songs Sara made in the last year of her life, along with songs for Sara by her friends and collaborators, Ash Bell and Lucienne Thorne. Aptly titled, Golden Girl. I attend a small concert launch. Bell and Thorne are polished performers, I have seen both play many times before, but, in this context, they are struggling to speak between songs. How rarely we see this public mourning: how long it hurts, how fresh loss stays.

They invite Sara’s younger daughter, Poppy, on stage to sing the parts that would have been hers. Poppy’s voice is unexpectedly light and soaring. She’s lost so much, but she’s still sharing. It’s heartrending, but the songs themselves get sung.

I buy the album and once I’m back home I put it on. A whole new set of stories. Another gift. Sara’s voice, that lilting twang. I feel the same rush of feeling I always have on hearing her. How resilient love is! We never had that cuppa, but here I am, at the midnight hour, in my kitchen, listening. Sometimes our only choice is to keep loving from afar.

Golden Girl is out now. Visit Sara Tindley’s website here. Jessie Cole is the author of four books. Her latest is Desire: A Reckoning.