From Evan (our youngest) …

Today I would like to take this opportunity to share with you how I will remember my Mum.

I will remember her as someone who was devoted to her family. Mum would have done absolutely anything for us. This is something I took for granted as I was growing up. It was just a given.  We always knew (whether we liked it or not) Mum would be doing what she thought was best for us. The knowledge that my Mum was always there to pick up the pieces made me feel secure and enabled me to take chances and to seize opportunities in my life. I am certain that without this constant support I would not have even considered training as a barrister, much less stuck at it when I struggled to get a pupillage. At the time when I was feeling most despondent about my chances at the bar, Mum sent me the details of a pupillage in Southampton. I decided not to apply, preferring to try a crack-pot scheme to make money selling surf boards over the internet. However, the seed was sown. A year later I decided I would have one last throw of the dice and applied to the chambers in Southampton.

Mum’s advice, not for the first time, had been spot on: I was accepted and had a foot on the ladder. This is but one example of thousands of instances where she made suggestions, gave advice and generally cajoled me into making the best of myself.

I will also remember my Mum as someone who was totally committed to her job. I say job, although vocation would almost certainly be a better word for it.  She was up each day at the crack of dawn (my Dad usually reviving her with the help of a cup of tea) and would head off to work. She would return home each evening, feeling tired, but more often than not with a little more work to do that night or over the weekend. You might think that after facing the slings and arrows of the average day at a school or pupil referral unit that the last thing she would want to talk about would be work, but far from it. She would always have a story to tell, always with compassion and usually with some plan of action for doing something to better the situation.

Finally, I will remember her as a courageous woman who was full of fight. Anyone who met my Mum would be able to testify that she was a fighter.

She stood up for what she believed and would hold her ground in any dispute. My Dad is also someone who does not readily concede an argument. This may explain why they had a quarrel over the rules of crib that lasted six years. Not that either of them bore a grudge about it – they just stuck to the far less controversial game of dominoes! When Mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the end of April this year she bravely decided she would make the most out of whatever time she had left. To this ends, she made the uncomfortable journey to France several times in between her sessions of chemotherapy to stay at the house where she and Dad had hoped to spend much of their retirement. On the Saturday before she died, when she was feeling at a particularly low ebb, she made the effort to visit my parents’ friends the Swifts to see Anneka’s new baby Jimmy. If there was one thing in life my mother never grew tired of it was babies and she had a wonderful evening. During her illness, she took up all the treatment the doctors offered and fought to the very last breath. This is indicative of her approach to her life as a whole. It is a life my family has been very lucky to share in and she is someone I am very proud to have known.