SHE was a woman who her friends say would have loved the idea of doing something “crazy”.

So when loved ones wanted to honour the memory of Kelly Pope – who died after a three-year battle with cancer – they decided to do something fitting.

Her best friend of 12 years, Jade Dickerson, and a team of 24 people will skydive on September 22 to raise £10,000 for Sobell House Hospice.

Mrs Pope was told she had terminal bowel cancer last December and died at the Headington hospice on June 3. She was just 35.

Miss Dickerson, of Barns Road, Cowley, said: “You know when you have a friend that you can just go to and they talk to you and they know exactly what to say; she was that friend to me.

“It’s something crazy and that’s what Kelly was like. She would have loved the idea of doing something crazy.”

Mrs Pope was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in April 2012 and needed emergency chemotherapy at London’s Charing Cross Hospital.

She lost her 55-year-old mother, Jayne Trinder, from Southmoor, to skin cancer three months later and had an ovary removed in October 2012.

Mrs Pope was then diagnosed with bowel cancer in April 2013, just days after her grandfather, Tom Ibell, from Wantage, passed away.

She had part of her liver and bowel removed three months later, while undergoing chemotherapy at the Churchill Hospital and was told she had months to live after suffering a cardiac arrest last December.

Mrs Pope, who was a senior pharmacy technician at the John Radcliffe Hospital for 17 years and lived with husband-of-five-years Richard in Southmoor, moved into Sobell House in the middle of May.

Miss Dickerson, a team leader at automotive company Eberspächer, said she had found it “tough” celebrating her 30th birthday on July 29 without her best friend.

She said: “I feel quite lost without her. It’s been hard. She was an incredible person. She meant a lot to a lot of people.

“She hit death face on. She was always thinking about other people, even when she was ill.”

Miss Dickerson, 30, said she first met Mrs Pope through a mutual friend during her birthday party at the former Shelley Arms pub, in Cricket Road.

She said Mrs Pope chipped in with money for a present, buying her an 18th birthday key and shot glass, despite never meeting before the party.

Miss Dickerson added: “I remember feeling so grateful at the time. We instantly hit it off and clicked.”

Fundraisers, who will leap out of a plane at Hinton-in-the-Hedges, near Brackley, have already raised more than £5,000.

To donate, see justgiving.com/teams/jumpforkelly.