She dedicated her life to helping others. In death, Wendy Hawkins kept doing just that.
When she lost her five-year battle against cancer in January, aged 49, her family and close friends knew she planned to bequeath her body to science.
"I think she just wanted to keep on giving," says her partner, Brian Coumbe. "She didn't want her body to go to waste or be buried anywhere. We're both more practical than sentimental about things."
She hoped her body would help to teach medical students and other health professionals about human anatomy.
Her decision meant she had to die in Christchurch rather than on the West Coast, where she and Coumbe lived.
Special embalming is required for donated bodies. In the South Island, that can only be done in Nelson, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill.
"We even had arranged a friend's house that she was going to die in but we didn't quite get there as it turned out."
She also had to enrol with a Christchurch doctor, who would later certify death.
Prior to her death, the couple visited the Christchurch funeral director to arrange her body donation.
"That was quite hard because everything was just a confirmation that you were giving up and you were going to die," the 55-year-old tour guide says.
About five years ago, a story on National Radio led Hawkins to discover her breast cancer.
"It said as well as lumps, you're looking for depressions. She found a depression in her breast and went over to get it checked and it turned out to be a big tumour," Coumbe says.
A mastectomy followed but she decided against chemotherapy because of its risks.
Unfortunately, her cancer's progress was relentless and many hospitalisations for treatment or care followed.
Several years ago, it became clear it was terminal.
Even on her sick bed, she kept teaching staff while they treated her.
"One of the things that came out after she died was when Wendy would be sick and had to have treatment, she would be still tutoring people. One nurse said she didn't want to nurse Wendy because it was like nursing Florence Nightingale," Coumbe says.
She also kept developing her own career, working for a while as a rural nurse in Franz Josef Glacier and Fox Glacier, a role she loved but was forced to stop when spinal cancer made it too difficult.
Hawkins worked until five months before she died but stayed on the hospital's books as a casual consultant.
"She feared not being allowed to work. She never did quit. That was her passion, nursing. She was a people person and it was something that she was good at."
Last August, the couple received the devastating news that no further treatment was possible.
‘That was the hardest thing. That was really the line in the sand. After that, it was just waiting. Back then, she knew she had lost the fight and there was a lot of anguish about that. She cried for about three days."
Their focus turned to ticking off her bucket list, visiting places such as Denniston Plateau, near Westport, and gliding in Omarama. In her final year, they bought a campervan and took frequent trips away, joined by their 13-year-old "fur children", two miniature fox terriers Al and Nocte.
She died surrounded by close friends and family. Coumbe says it was no problem that her body was not at her funeral because of the embalming process. However, he has requested her ashes are sent to him once the medical school is finished with her body in about 18 months.
While he admits he is struggling without his beloved partner, he gains comfort knowing she is continuing to educate fellow health professionals in death. "I think it's a story she would like to have told. People were very accepting of it and were very proud of her. Me too."