RITA Redfern, has endured tragedy that would leave most of us reeling, having lost both a husband and partner to cancer and faced a battle with bowel cancer herself.

But the 72-year-old, from Rayleigh, remains positive and is determined to keep going and keep helping others.

Last year, she took on the Great Pier Walk with her family in aid of Southend Hospital’s Keyhole Cancer Appeal and they are back again for 2015.

Rita and her daughters have even become “poster girls” for the walk as they feature on a promotional picture for the event.

Rita and daughters Nikki and Sam are staunch supporters of Southend Hospital’s Keyhole Cancer Appeal. They will be putting their best foot forward again for this year’s walk, which is being held on Sunday.

“I just want to do my bit,” says Rita. “I think it’s great the hospital has this appeal because it raises awareness of bowel cancer.

Fear of the unknown is such a big thing and, when I had bowel cancer, I felt I couldn’t talk about it.

“Nowwe have the appeal, and if you can have keyhole surgery rather than being opened up, well, that’s fantastic.”

At the age of 54, Rita lost her husband, Doug, father of the couple’s three grown-up children, to kidney cancer six weeks after he was diagnosed at the age of 56.

He died just three months after the birth of his first grandchild.

Devastated, his widow threw herself into her job as a practice manager for a busy GP surgery in Rayleigh, as well as running a small social club for people who had lost loved ones to cancer.

It was there, in 2008, 11 years after the death of her husband, that Rita met widower Chris Purcell. Romance blossomed, giving both of them a second chance of happiness and they were welcomed into each other’s families.

Just two years later, Rita discovered she had bowel cancer following a colonoscopy. “I was terrified,”

she says.

The grandmother-of-two underwent hours of major and invasive surgery at Southend Hospital to remove a large section of the area.

Declining chemotherapy, she was back at work after three weeks.

“The care I received at Southend Hospital was superb,”

Rita says. “I will always remember Mr Praveen drawing me a diagram and saying ‘you have it here and here and we will remove that part and you will be fine’.

“Of course, I had my low moments, but he was so positive and matter-of-fact and so was I.”

The couple got on with their lives for the next year or so, but then Chris, a keen cyclist and walker who had always embraced healthy living, started becoming tired.

“We had come back from Madeira in the October, and we knewhewas ill,” Rita recalls. “But then when they said they thought it was cancer, it just came of the blue. They thought it was in the bone, but theyweren’t sure where.

By January, he was having tests at the hospital.”

Chris died the next month. He was just 62.

Rita refuses to be consumed by bitterness. “I consider that I am a positive person and I have survived,”

she says. “I have been blessed with a lovely family and friends. That’s not to say that my losses weren’t terrible things to happen – they were both lovely men who did not deserve to die.”

The Great Pier Walk is on Sunday from 10am till 4pm. To take part, call the hospital fundraising team on 01702 385337, or email fundraising@southend.nhs.uk To ensure your entry fee benefits the Keyhole Cancer Appeal, walkers must register in advance.

Any entry fees taken on the day will be split between the Rotary Club’s chosen charities.