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
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