R.I.P. Vicky Bazgier 1948-2026
25 Aug 2026

Vicky Bazgier, who died on 23rd August 2026, was my ex-wife, best friend and soulmate. She was born in Poland to a Polish father and English mother who had met during the war. However, her mother felt very uncomfortable in Poland as she couldn't speak the language and found the culture very different from what she was used to. When she saw that the Iron Curtain was coming down and she would be trapped on the wrong side of it, she fled with Vicky, aged 18 months, back to the UK. She had no option but to live with her parents, who resented Vicky for not being 100% English, and as a result Vicky had a somewhat turbulent childhood. Nevertheless, she was strong willed and her difficulties only strengthened her resolve to succeed in life. She gained a good education at both Lancaster and Aston Universities and had a successful career in social services, eventually rising to be Service Manager in Warrington.

She had been a committed vegan since she was 18 years old, and it was part of a whole way of life for her. She believed in fairness, in justice for all, she stuck to her principles and always tried to do the right thing for the planet, for animals, for other people and for herself. She stuck to these principles uncompromisingly, even if it brought her into conflict with others. She was also an ardent feminist and stood up for the rights of women. All these things contributed to what made her appealing to me.

I met her through Vegetarian Matchmakers in 1991. This was before the days of internet dating, when members perused monthly sheets of profiles sent through the post. I had been bold enough to include my phone number in my profile and she phoned me. I was immediately drawn in by her voice and we met a few days later in Manchester and got on like a house on fire. In 1992 we bought a house together in Warrington and in 1993 we got married.

Unfortunately around the turn of the millennium we ran into some difficult times and we let ourselves become overwhelmed by them and eventually divorced in 2004. We were both partly to blame but the decision to divorce was mine alone. However, after a short period of bad blood we became friends, a bit tentatively at first (on my part at least) but eventually we became very firm friends. We shared so many things - interests, tastes, humour, politics, values, ethics - that it would have been silly to throw that all away. Although I made it crystal clear that there was no chance of a return to any kind of romantic relationship, we remained the most important people in each other's lives. We only saw each other occasionally but we emailed virtually every day and had long conversations on the phone every two or three days on every topic under the sun. We both knew each other better than anyone else did. We had our own in-jokes, which I will never be able to share with anyone else, and our own silly language and phrases and could make each other collapse with laughter effortlessly. We both agreed that a really strong friendship was more rewarding than a sometimes fractious relationship. When you have a degree of independence it's easier to accommodate differences. Maybe that's just a flaw in my personality and doesn't apply to others.

In 2022 I started to notice some worrying signs that she was suffering from cognitive impairment, and these increased over time. I begged and begged her repeatedly to see a doctor but she flatly refused and in fact got quite angry with me over it. I managed to get her to a doctor by contacting her GP behind her back but she dismissed him as a charlatan. She had a car accident when she ran into the back of another car which I'm sure was caused by her mind switching off. By the summer of 2023 she was in a bad state, phoning me up to 50 times a day to tell me the same thing because she had forgottgen she had just done so only a few minutes earlier, or to ask me where she was, why couldn't she go home, whether she was allowed to use her washing machine and other nonsensical questions. Every day she lost her keys, or her iPad, or her bank card, and I had to drive over to Warrington to find them for her, and to take her shopping because she could no longer cope with making the payments. The reason she was losing things was because she was getting up in the middle of the night, looking for anything that might get stolen, hiding them somewhere and then forgetting she had done so in the morning. This convinced her that there were people living in her house without her knowledge who were stealing everything.

I got her to see a doctor again and went with her this time, but the result was the same. I was now tearing my hair out wondering what on earth I could do for her when she had a fall at home and couldn't move. I rushed over to Warrington, got her to hospital and immediately they recognised that her mind was not working properly. She was placed in a care home and diagnosed with Alzheimers. Over the next couple of years she slowly deteriorated, though she was always happy and contented, but the deterioration accelerated in her final year until she was taken to hospital where she refused food and drink and was unable to get out of bed. The hospital got her into a specialist care home as her original one wasn't equipped to handle her needs, but by this time she was already classed as being in an end-of-life situation. She lasted two more weeks, still refusing food and drink, until eventually her body gave up the fight. Luckily I had been able to go to Warrington to visit her 10 days earlier. To my great surprise she recognised me and responded to me, telling me how much she loved me. Every other word that came out of her mouth was nonsensical. She looked comfortable and contented and she died peacefully im her bed.

Although I effectively lost her four years ago, it was still a blow. She was the most important person in my life for 35 years. She taught me so much about myself, and I'm sure that without her I would have been a lesser person than I am now.