Woman Beats Cancer, Dies in Freak Bucket-List Fall

After four years of chemo in facing down—and recently beating—breast cancer, 51-year-old Geraldine Jones set out to fulfill a "lifelong dream" of riding a horse on her favorite stretch of beach in South Wales as a way to "appreciate every moment," a close friend tells the Telegraph. But that dream was cut short when she fell from her horse and, in spite of her helmet, sustained a fatal head injury. Though her experienced rider friend and a passing jogger both administered first aid, she was pronounced dead on the coast guard flight to a nearby hospital.

"He has been inconsolable ever since," a neighbor says of Jones' husband in an interview with the Daily Mail. "She had faced this cancer battle and they had overcome it together … And then this goes and happens. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything more tragic in my life." Jones, who had been communications director at a hospital in Wales until she turned to freelance PR consulting a year ago to spend more time with her family, is also survived by her two teenage sons. "They were not doing anything wrong," a member of the coast guard said of the riders. "They were just enjoying the day, as everyone was." (See what another cancer survivor elected to do with his time.)