Ann Pendray - My Talk at the Celebration

In 1950, when there was, like now, a King on the throne, my father-in-law, Charles Milnes, turned back while climbing Snowdon, to ask his wife why she not keeping up? That was the first occasion when Ann, and her twin sister Carol were making their presence in the world known.  After 10 years of marriage Mary discovered she was pregnant one month, learned that it was twins the next, and the following month gave birth, two breech presentations. Well Done Mary!

After one year the family left the small flat over a shoe shop in Southport, and took a rented cottage in Trevor, north of Llangollen, as Charles got a better paid job at the electricity board.  Ann remembers a carefree childhood, roaming over the hills with her sister, attending primary school in the next door village of Garth.  She remembered the staff carrying them on their shoulders when the snow lay higher than they were.

Every now and again Charles would take them to Chester, and Mary would wave them off saying “Don’t you go spoiling them and buying them new frocks” but Ann’s recollection was that they always came home with a new dress each.  

Later they bought their first house, in Chirk, and Ann thrived at Ruabon grammar school, being particularly inspired by a French teacher, and going on to become head girl.  This was despite, by her account, blowing out the windows of the chemistry lab earlier in her time there, and despite being English during a revival of Welsh nationalism.

Ann felt that the swinging sixties largely passed them by, living some distance from the school; they saw little of their neighbours, and less of their school mates outside school. She also described feeling lonely at university, although she did make a handful of lifelong friends at the time.   Unlike at school, the French teaching at Liverpool University disappointed her.  She did have an exciting year in France, choosing to go alone to the university in Aix-en-Provence in preference to others where groups of course colleagues were.

After university she worked briefly for the electricity board and as a librarian before the major breakdown that saw her hospitalised for several years in her twenties. I am grateful to Nic who will say a little more about this episode of Ann’s life. I met Ann as she was in and out of hospital, aware that life for Ann was hard, and had been truly awful.

 

So I have chosen this picture to remind me that not all of Ann’s life before I met her was awful.

 So Ann and I met. It was not exactly love at first sight, but as a group of us were enjoying a Sunday afternoon walk I remember giving her a piggyback, so there was a spark of something right from our first meeting.

It was a stormy time of Ann’s life, in and out of hospital. I especially recall two conversations when I felt my heart really drawn to her, one was in her parents back sitting room, and the other was on chairs placed in the sunshine for us outside ward 28, the psychiatric ward, at Sefton General Hospital, where the Asda is now.  

But gradually life calmed down, and as the picture shows, we were married. How happy we were. When we stopped for tea on the journey the next day, they would not let us pay our bill, they could tell we were just married!

Ann was a wonderful mother, nurturing the children and giving them a breadth of experiences, but life for her was still incredibly hard. Ann developed agoraphobia, and was hospitalised with anxiety and depression on three occasions, the first abruptly ending our honeymoon, and the last interrupting her first term as a teacher.

Our holidays, though limited by her agoraphobia, were always refreshing and we enjoyed the fun we had without considering that we were missing out at all.

Our marriage at that time felt very brittle. We did not have the understanding or appreciation of God’s grace that He has given us over the years, and the marriage was not the strong comfortable relationship it later came to be.  In a recent conversation we struggled to think of anything good about the those early years.

I have chosen this picture (above)(for the order of service) as it shows us both smiling, which is more than this (next) one does. 

But this is the one I really wanted, to remind me that we did love each other, even in those early difficult years.

Now we move on to the time when Ann became a teacher.

She has half a GCSE in double science. She volunteered as a parent helper at Christian Fellowship School, and when they opened up GCSE classes to parents alongside years 10 and 11, Ann started studying science, and was doing very well.

However that stopped after one year, when she became a member of staff, filling a vacancy teaching French.  Over the course of fifteen years she took on other responsibilities, as a class teacher, teaching PSHE, which included sex education, and becoming safeguarding lead.  She co-led a combined French language and history school trip.  So far as I can tell, most pupils found her caring and inspiring.

Her time as a teacher was bookended by care for family members. Her father Charles died two years before Mary, who lived with us for the last 12 months, after her cancer diagnosis. Later, Carol’s husband died two years before her, and Ann saw her regularly during those two years.

It was also a time when she developed her interest in art, studying city & guilds courses, first in felt-making, and then in embroidery. Her love of the garden flourished at that time, when she could remember the names of all her plants with ease. She also enjoyed her bonfires.

(In the Order of Service) in place of the picture (above), I nearly chose this one, because it shows Ann as a teacher in France on a school trip, touring a small chocolate factory.

But the one I really wanted was this one. I think it was the only time Ann was with me on a boat I had charge of.

Her teaching career ended abruptly with her secondary breast cancer diagnosis in 2013, and I spoke at the crematorium of the wonder that she should have lived a further nine years. What years they were - making new friends, becoming a grandmother, sending aid to Syrian refugees, travelling in England Europe and America.

 This (above) is a lovely picture of Ann in 2015, but the one I really wanted, from that same year, was this, which speaks to me about Ann in so many ways.  

First of all, she was wearing that cardigan, and she did really love that cardigan.  It speaks to me of her becoming a grandmother and of her love of family, as it was taken in America, where we had gone so that she could spend time with Kim while she was pregnant with Jedidiah.  It pictures her knitting, and she has recently been teaching Jedidiah to knit.

It also represents the high point of her victory over agoraphobia. She had regained most of her life, travelled on motorways again, had led a school trip underground on the Paris Metro, and then in 2010 she dreamed that she could fly again.  We did indeed fly, with two friends to Nice in 2011 and with friends to Chicago for John & Kim’s wedding in 2012. On this 2015 trip, I stayed only 12 days and Ann stayed on choosing to travel back by herself. It was a remarkable achievement.

When this picture was posted on Facebook, a friend of John & Kim’s arranged to come and knit with Ann, and developed a friendship over the four weeks of Ann’s stay. So this picture speaks to me of all the people who got to know Ann through her love of knitting fabric sewing and her other other craft interests. There are many here today.

 

Four Pictures that made it into the Order of Service

I have spoken of Ann’s early life, our early marriage, her teaching, and her retirement.

My plan was for the order of service to have only four pictures, but this last picture chose itself.

Ann lived life to the full, thankful for, and enjoying every day that God gave her. In her final few weeks she met many of her friends, and indeed, her English grandsons.  This picture shows her with them on Wednesday afternoon, just two days before she died, enjoying every moment.

Ann Pendray - My talk at the Crematorium

When we get to the Celebration later on, I hope to speak a little about Ann’s life. For now, what I have to say is more about her illness and death.

When Ann was told she had an incurable cancer about this time in 2013, her first reaction was to pray to God. She was immediately filled with an overwhelming sense of thankfulness. She prayed a second time, and again her spirit was flooded with thanksgiving.

She was ready to die, she told me. She thought her art had peaked, and she had found a successor for her position teaching French at Christian Fellowship School. It was hard on the children, but they had faith, and would have to dig deep. She always thought she would want to see the seaside one more time, but the wall outside her window seemed to be everything she needed.

Such acceptance on her part made it easier for the rest of us to come to terms with such appalling news.

Ann never prayed for healing for herself, she was happy enough when others prayed for her healing, but she never asked them to.  She had known others who had been in faith for healing, and it seemed to her a failure when they died.  She wanted to die with a sense of thanksgiving.

In the meantime I was praying. It looked very likely that she might die before Christmas, and I was praying she would recover and that we would enjoy a few months together in 2014 before she died.  

But God, it says in Ephesians, is able to do far more abundantly than we can ask or even imagine, and we never imagined that she would live to meet five grandsons and be watching the waves on the Yorkshire coast in August 2022.

Ann told a friend recently that, excepting for childbirth, the last 9 years were probably the best of her life. In this, she was helped by three wonderful groups of people.

She received and gave support in the on-line secondary breast cancer group, especially in the early days, and we met up occasionally, including us husbands. I met some great people.

Sixty Million Trebles, another on-line group, that meets up once each year, drew its name from the measure of blankets they initially sent out for Syrians in refugee camps. Since then they have sent many more, and other goods, and raised over twenty thousand pounds to renovate 28 war damaged schools in Syria.

Ann has found the Knit & Natter group at Calderstones to be the most inclusive group she has ever been part of. She did not expect to be making new friends at that time of life, but that is exactly what has happened.

And what amazing friends. Just as an example…When the bag holding Ann’s syringe driver fell apart, they did not make just one new bag. They rifled through Ann’s fabric box and made 30 bright colourful syringe driver bags, and now the district nurses are giving them out to their other patients.

From mid September the syringe driver meant that Ann was confined to the house, but those weeks have been amazing.

John and Kim were able to visit from America and spend eight days, without their children, and get lots of good conversations, and not a few tears, and we had a great family photo-shoot.

Ann established a wonderful rapport with all the district nurses and carers who came to the house, and had some really good conversations. She also received visits from many friends, some of whom she had not seen in months and even years.  

She would have loved to live another 20 years, but was thankful for life, which she lived to the full.  Even last Wednesday, the reading group met, and Ann was on especially good form, as those there will remember.

The following day was different. After nine years of living with cancer, Ann was now dying of cancer. It was not drawn out.

Do you feel sad when someone dies? I have to say I did not there and then. It was so peaceful. I felt buoyed up by all the love around us, and so thankful that we had been able to give her what she wanted. She wanted to die at home, with family around her, me holding her hand, and with that same sense of thankfulness that God had given her when she prayed nine years ago.

Mike Pendray