Eulogy

 Eulogy

Ann, or mum as I knew her, was 64 years old. She was born in 1946, soon after the end of the Second World War. like many at the time she grew up in a multi-generational household. she lived with her mum and her grandparents. later she and her mum were given a council flat in Elm Park and at that point her dad joined them, and the three of them then lived together as a family until mum moved out and married in 1967, just before her 21st birthday.

Ann had a curious mind and she hoped to have done more travelling than she did. when she was 17 she travelled to Norway to meet with her pen friend Torill, the name she later gave me, and she didn’t do much more foreign travel after that despite wanting to feed her curiosity. but I did take it to Spain for three days, most of which was spent travelling there as we took the ferry, just a few years ago before she died.

She was a very active and creative person. once her children had reached school age she went back to work full time working at cork gully as an administrator - she was determined not to be a typist as typing or telephony had been the only choices is for girls when she left school.

In addition to her career mum studied for a degree with the open University as well as running the students Association. To each of the student Association meetings she took Donald, her faithful bear, Who was with her almost until her very last breath, had he not been taken from her deathbed as she lay dying.

Mum liked to write books. one of the main characters for her books were the teddy bears or the teddy bear boys as I think she liked to call them. on the day she died she had 24 unfinished books on the go. she also like to do embroidery And had some complete and some incomplete pieces still in progress. she liked music, Particularly high tempo loud Glam rock and she enjoyed baking. in early years when I was younger she also enjoyed jam making and onion pickling both of which which I enjoyed the end products of. She like to listen to radio four and to read the guardian newspaper. Indeed she taught me to read from the Guardian newspaper. And education was of importance to her; she would say, “get an education - it's the one thing they cannot take from you”.

Ann was raised by salvationist mother and grandparents but by about the age of 17 she had decided that to be a Quaker was her chosen path. Following her choice of faith is what gave her the strength to do something I thought might have been beyond her, which was to move to Leicester to become a resident friend at the Leicester meeting house and it is here but I know she was very happy. she later went on to be a live in warden at the Southampton Quaker meeting house and I don’t know how well that started but I do know that she was very unhappy.

Fortunately she moved away from there in her last few months of life and he was just starting out on her new venture, the next stage of her life in Peterborough in her new house with a number of new things she had just bought to start on the garden and everything that she wanted to do with that - her many, many projects and thoughts and dreams. it was never to be, as only weeks after moving to Peterborough she was diagnosed with a terminal illness and nine weeks later she had died from it.