Losing my ex Julian Sands and brother, Kit, has meant a year of sorrow – but there has been unexpected joy too

Devastated by the deaths of her former husband Julian Sands and her brother, the lyricist, composer and performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey, Sarah Sands thought nothing would come good of 2023, but then some unexpected arrivals ushered in new hope

A photo album of loss and sorrow for Sarah Sands (Shutterstock/iStock/Sarah Sands/The Independent)

On Remembrance Day, 11 November, I was sitting next to my heavily pregnant niece, Augusta – or Gus as we call her – watching a cantata written by her father, my brother the composer Kit Hesketh-Harvey and his musical partner, James McConnel. An evening sea mist enveloped the church on the Norfolk coast as the requiem aeternam was sung to a packed congregation remembering those we had lost including James’s son, Freddy, who had died in 2011 and my brother Kit who died this year.

The cantana had been written by my brother for a soldier he’d met on Constantine beach in Cornwall, where Kit had built an Arcadian holiday home for his family. The soldier, an army bomb disposal expert, had also been a chorister - an unusual combination and of particular interest to Kit who had been head chorister at Canterbury Cathedral.

He was called Olaf Schmid and was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2020, aged 30. Posthumously, he was awarded the George Cross.