On November 15, 10,000 people watched with me as Anita Mui Yim-fong pulled off what must be her greatest personal triumph - fighting her way past fatigue, cancer and medication to end her concert series on a triumphant note.
At the end of the concert, as she walked through the church doors on stage in a wedding gown, with some of her good friends behind her, there was a finality about the scene. I knew then that, after many false alarms, it would be probably be the last time that Mui would hold a solo concert.
What I hadn't expected, however, was that it would be the last time I would see the consummate performer in the flesh. Yes, we all knew she had cancer of the cervix after her much publicised announcement on September 20.
'I may be a patient, but I am not a weak person. Watch me beat this,' she told Hong Kong - and we believed her.
We wanted to believe her - fate could not be so unkind as to rob Hong Kong of three of its best entertainers in just 15 months: first Roman Tam Pak-sin from liver cancer in October last year, then Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing in a suicide in April. Both had been good friends of Mui.
When a local fortune-teller announced after Cheung's death that a female superstar with the Chinese character 'wood' in her name would die before the end of the year, all fingers pointed at Mui.