Whole School Assembly Friday 1^st July 2022

Remembering and celebrating the life of Sahana

Good morning, everyone and welcome to this very special assembly.

A very warm welcome to Mr and Mrs Ananth and other family members who are here with us to share some reflections on Sahana. We appreciate how hard this might be for you, but I hope that you will be pleased with what we have to say about your beloved daughter. This is also hard for us, but we must be brave and try to show to Mr and Mrs Ananth the sympathy and support we extend to them at this time.

How does one begin to explain the fact that one of our students, Sahana, a 12 and half year old, bright, happy, beautiful and gifted child is no longer with us; that her dreams and ambitions when she came to this school in September 2021, will not be realised and how all of us in this room mourn her absence from our school?

I have been thinking about Sahana a lot over the last few weeks, and like many of us, I was shocked and very upset when we received the news of her death. How could this be? This should not happen, we said. Sadly, it does and despite our deep sorrow and sadness we have to carry on our lives without Sahana. 

Today, we want to celebrate Sahana to show and share with Sahana’s parents what we feel about her and the immense contribution she made to our school.

Over the last few months and in the days since her death, I think we have all got to know Sahana and have come to appreciate the kind of person she was. In a moment, students in her form will speak about her with great love and affection as a loyal friend, a kind and caring individual, a selfless human being who thought of others more than herself. Someone, who right up to the end comforted her family and told them to be brave, to be strong, not to cry and demonstrated to them a resilience she had to manage her pain in her last moments.

As a child who was just 12 years and seven months, I believe, Sahana is an inspiration to us, and we can learn a lot from her and her short life. Whether we knew her or not, we can be encouraged to be better versions of ourselves and to be like her - kind and considerate, determined and passionate about the things she loved; her family, her school, her music and so much more. Perhaps people who did know Sahana and those of us who are just getting a glimpse of her will begin to appreciate that she was an individual who spread happiness amongst us.

We are now going to hear some insights about Sahana from her friends.

• Students’ contributions – see presentation
• Music tribute
• Tribute from Annie, a member of the Kendrick Student Leaders team, on behalf of the student body

Reflection

Thank you everyone, I think we have all got to know a bit more about Sahana from our assembly today. I know what I have learnt about Sahana from her parents, is that she would not want us to be sad. She would want us to be happy, to carry on live our life to the full as she was doing before she became unwell.

Although she is not here to carry on her journey into Year 8 and beyond as was her dream and ambition, I think what she would want for us is that we carry on our journey, our life and do the things that she wanted to do in life; not wasting a moment, not complaining but enjoying and appreciating each other’s company, contributions and value.

Kendrick, our school, meant a lot to Sahana, she was proud to be a student here; she wore her uniform beautifully to show that her school mattered to her. In appreciating the person she was, let’s reflect on what we all have in this school and the community we are part of. Perhaps this is the legacy that she leaves us which is to value each other and our school and try to be the best we can be.

Please may we bow our heads for a few moments of reflection.

We are glad that Sahana was a student at our school. We know that Sahana’s time here was too short and there were many things she did not have the opportunity to do. We know that she had big dreams and ambitions, she had great skills and talents, she would have been an amazing person. We grieve her loss but we celebrate her life and the time she had with us at Kendrick. We will remember Sahana as a special and unique individual; someone who was a privilege to know and have in our community