A Leeds mum and grandma who 'lived to help others' has died at 57, leaving her family devastated.
Tracey Ledger, from Hunslet, died after battling Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) on Monday, October 11.
Tributes are being paid to Tracey, who battled through difficult circumstances her whole life and leaves behind four children and 13 grandchildren.
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Bruce Fidler, who was Tracey's partner for 18 years, told LeedsLive: "It's like a bomb has gone off. Her death has left a huge crater.
"Tracey and Tracey's house was ground zero that connected all of us - this has kind of severed those links.
"It's so strange - I used to see her everyday. She was an amazing woman."
Bruce, 55, and Tracey separated around 2010, but the two remained "best friends" until her death.
Tracey had not had an easy life - Bruce said she grew up with an abusive father and her mum was not often around.
He added that she then got into another abusive relationship, in which she had six children, one who died in the cot and one who died in the parents' bed.
She had a further violent relationship after that.
She later met Bruce, who said: "When I met her, all she lived on packets of crisps. Everybody around her, she fed, but her - all she ate was crisps and cups of tea. She survived like that for so long and just kept going.
"Tracey was the kind of person that helped everybody. Everybody liked her. She just lived her life doing stuff for other people.
"She was the most unselfish person I knew. She was generous to a fault, she would never see anybody go without. She was a warrior and she will be missed."
Tracey spent much of her time caring for one of her sons, who has cerebral palsy and also had one of her grandchildren living with her.
Just before she and Bruce separated, another of her grandchildren died after suffering from respiratory problems.
She was diagnosed with lung disease a decade ago and had been battling the effects ever since.
She took steroids and antibiotics because she kept getting lung infections, which eventually affected her organs.
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Bruce said just this year she went through three heart attacks and a cardiac arrest event.
She has been increasingly in and out of hospital in the time leading up to her death, and struggled being out of the house.
Eventually, she went to bed at around 2am on October 11, and was found sitting at her computer dead by her grandson, 20, in the morning.
Left without Tracey, who had no savings or health insurance, Bruce and his family are trying to raise money for her funeral.
"I contracted sepsis in 2018, and I spent five weeks in a coma in hospital," Bruce told LeedsLive.
"Tracey was at my bedside every day. Apparently, she insisted there was no way I was going to wake up on my own and not know what was going on. Everyone was telling her to go home and she wouldn't leave me alone. That's just who she was."
You can find Tracey's Go Fund Me page here.
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