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Celebration of the Life of Jenny Phillips

I am going to set the tone by quoting an anonymous poem, to which I have taken the liberty of giving my own Title. 

On Grieving - Choosing the Low Road or the High Road 

You can shed tears that she is gone,

Or you can smile because she lived.

You can close your eyes and pray that she will come back,

Or you can open your eyes and see all that she has left.

Your heart can be empty because you can’t see her,

Or you can be full of the love you shared.

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday,

Or you can be happy today because of yesterday.

You can remember only that she is gone,

Or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back,

Or you can do what she would want,

Smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

Let us today choose the High road and celebrate the fact that Jenny’s life touched so many other lives in ways that will long be remembered by them.

 (I now hand over the celebration to Pastor Matthew.)

(following special music by Kevin and Katy)

Jenny - A Life Remembered

A eulogy (from eulogia, Classical Greek, eu for "well" or "true", logia for "words" or "text", together for "praise") that is a speech or writing in praise of a person.

Jennifer Mary Phillips, née Spy.

Spy! Let me explain that first. Jenny was a descendant of the MacDonald Clan of Glencoe. On February 13th, 1692, the Campbell Clan, being hosted at the time, turned on their hosts and massacred men, women and children. But, the story goes, a nursemaid managed to rescue a baby and carry him over the hills and down into the valley of the Spey River. To protect him, his name was changed to Spey. Somewhere in the family history one branch of the family removed the e and became Spy. Jenny’s dad, a senior civil surveyor with British Railways was the only Spy in the London Telephone directory. So my girlfriend and I backpacked on the continent with her passport reading “Jennifer M. Spy”. “ess, pay, egrecht! C’est tout” said the puzzled customs officer looking at this long legged young woman. British laws never seem to be repealed, so when she married me, she was no longer in fear of being killed by a Redcoat soldier.

———

It may seem an odd place to start, but let me begin on April 10th, 1952, my 10th birthday. Planned was a visit to a roller skating rink that afternoon. My mother cycled off that morning to get her hair done at the village shop. I waved. I never saw her again. She was hit by a car, fell on her head and I was told very much later that she had died a week or more later, still in a coma. Children of 10 were shielded from such things as death and funerals in those days. The concept of closure did not apply to children. 

In a village only a few miles away, a little 8 year old girl, called Jennifer Spy, cried inexplicably about the little boy who was now motherless, the only son of her family doctor, though she had never met him. Her mother recalled that odd event quite vividly. 

Jenny was a “surprise”, born 11 years after her brother and a very different person from him. He had been on mandatory military service in Aden and had got used to the offshore life of a young sailor of those days. Returning home, he repeatedly abused his little sister between the ages of 9 and 11, at which point he got married, and had two daughters and a son of his own. (We can only guess what happened there.) Threatened with goodness knows what if she told, she remained silent and traumatized, a deep scar which she would carry and would reverberate through the rest of her life. She never told her parents. When news of her brother’s death reached her many years later, her single comment was “Good Riddance”. So, full of caring and compassion as she was, what she would have liked to do to any child molester would have blanched even a medieval master torturer. 

When 13, Jenny, dissatisfied with her own church youth group, came hesitantly, at the invitation of a friend, to visit the Young People’s Fellowship of the Congregational church of which the Phillips family were members. She was shy, quiet and withdrawn but joined the group. I was 15, a chronically depressed (but children did not suffer depression in those days), acne faced, and morose teenager with an almost permanent frown. For some extraordinary reason, Jenny took me on as her project. I owe her an unpayable debt for very gradually winkling me out of my self built shell and giving me a reason to live. At the same time I gave her a purpose and a reason to try to emerge from her own trauma. I think we knew even then that we were soulmates and meant to be together. 

While many find it hard to believe, she was the classic introvert, very content to be on her own, in silence, reading or doing one of her many creative hobbies. An analyst would likely have concluded that she learned to extrovert while a teen, as a form of self defence. And she did it well, two rather different people in one. With a sizeable streak of unpredictability, often perplexing to others, I can assure you that as her partner in life, there were few dull moments. As we often noted, we were incompatible in many ways, but complementary and supplementary to each other in ways that we made work.

Jenny’s parents wished for their young daughter to have private dancing lessons, but she needed a partner. She shyly asked if I would be her partner. We were an ideal match. Over the next year or so, we took our Bronze, Silver and Gold medal exams in Ballroom, Latin American and Olde Time dancing, finally achieving a Gold Bar in Ballroom. Dancing at that level requires a high degree of unspoken communication which came in very useful in other areas of our lives. 

I went from Grammar School to Technical College to take courses in Geology which was not part of High School Curricula. Field Trips were a key part of the courses and I asked if my girlfriend could come too. Unencumbered by lawyers and third party liabilities, she came on nearly every Saturday excursion.

Story. We were in a pit in the sticky blue London Clay, looking for shark’s teeth, bivalves and other fossils. Our instructor, Doug, had just said that one rare fossil was a small crab, but he had never found one. A call from Jenny. “Do you mean like this one?” Doug looked at the crab in her hand, threw his hammer to the ground in half pretended frustration. He had been in the pit many times, yet this long legged young woman, not even a member of the class, had found the star fossil. Jenny’s attention to detail was remarkable. She noticed things totally missed by others and could have made a career of proofreading documents (other than mine) should she have wished to. 

At the Technical College I was elected to the Entertainments Committee and my girlfriend Jenny, though not at the College, nonetheless was coopted soon after. We ran some fairly large scale events and organized a Rag Week each year during which a large sum was collected for charities. (I ended up in a police wagon twice in a week, but that is another story. Not charged, just scolded and given a cup of tea.)

Story. At one event I was MC and introducing the numbers for Acker Bilk, the clarinetist, and his band, the year before he became internationally famous for “Stranger on the Shore”. Apparently, Jenny and some girls had been debating what Acker Bilk’s signature goatee would feel like, so at one point, between numbers, my girlfriend climbed onto the stage, walked up to him and asked to feel his goatee. He complied, and with a microphone right beside him, the entire assembly heard her say, “Oh that is really silky smooth”. Roars of applause, of course.

Some have said we were an adventurous couple. Jenny certainly was, but often I followed a little apprehensively. 

Story: Morocco, 1962. (What were our parents thinking!) We were on a bus, held together with wire and rope, bouncing down the rough road from Meknes, across the Atlas Mts to Ksar es Souk, a small hamlet on the edge of the Sahara Desert. With a packsack each, we were the only non Arabic faces on the bus, chickens dangling from the luggage rack, in the heat of the day. Everyone on a bus shares what they have with others and we had a supply of grapes on hand, obligated to eat whatever the heavily robed people around us passed to us. Jenny chatted (well, simple French) to a Monsieur Bengigi, who told us the single hotel was poor and invited us to stay at his house. We did. We were to sleep in the cool basement with the two manservants. But Jenny’s packsack mysteriously ended up in Monsieur Bengigi’s room. Jenny retrieved it. It somehow ended up there again and she retrieved it. In the end Monsieur Bengigi graciously took the hint. But the two manservants were just delighted. They got to see the English girl in her underwear and their boss did not. On reflection all kinds of things could have happened to us on that Moroccan adventure. Postcards were the only communication with home and we had no specific itinerary. We might simply have not been heard from again.

As a schoolgirl, her ADD was not recognized and she was repeatedly told that she was a poor student, which she came to believe. When I went off to university, she enrolled at the Leatherhead Secretarial School, where, almost to her surprise, she excelled. The school head sent her for an interview before graduation, and as her first job she was appointed secretary to the Remembrancer to the Lord Mayor of London, at Guildhall in the City. The remembrancer is responsible for ensuring that every ceremonial detail built up over the centuries was adhered to to the letter. The key event was the Annual Lord Mayor’s Banquet at Guildhall, attended always by the Queen and Prince Philip. Miss Spy, dressed in a gorgeous evening gown, attended these as one of many staff setting every detail in place. 

Story: At one of these, having completed her duties, she waited, backed into an antechamber doorway in the main corridor, to watch the Queen arrive. At the set time for the arrival of the royal couple, the door Jenny was leaning against was opened and she fell backwards, only to be caught by a strong pair of arms that lifted her back on her feet. She turned to find the Queen and Prince Philip laughing, quickly curtsied and said “Your Majesty”. Prince Philip said “Don’t worry my dear, we arrived a little early and caught them all out.” They then walked out into the corridor, guards snapping to attention. And that is how Jenny met the Queen and Prince Philip before any of the waiting toffs did.

With now separated lives to some degree, we did have other boyfriends and girlfriends. Jenny joined a Ukrainian Dance Group in London and, though I never saw it, performed in full costume with the dance group. A fellow assistant at the Guildhall, gay, a state that was precarious in those days, invited her to join him and his partner on a date and that began a long and fun relationship, she flanked by two handsome men and treated like a lady and they suitably disguising their relationship. They painted the town red together. One of her other boyfriends, more serious in intent, had a magnificent soprano voice and serenaded her from the lawn beneath her home window. I had nothing to compete with that. Sigh. Meantime, my university girlfriend was also a Jenny. Warning. Never have two girlfriends with the same name. To this day, I can hear my grandfather saying on the phone “Well, which are you, Jenny S or Jenny C.” OMG, I’m in trouble now. 

We married on September 11th 1965. Jenny arranged the whole thing, crossing traditional boundaries and ignoring the even then flourishing wedding industry. I was on the Isle of Man busy with research towards my PhD. As a result, I heard her say that she would “love, honour and cherish me” with no mention of that “obey” word. Big mistake, though come to think of it she wouldn’t have obeyed me anyway. She did take suggestions. 

She spent the summer of 1966 as my field assistant, surveying, SCUBA diving and joining me in my habitual all over tan. We rented, for 5 pounds a week, an old building on the shore, once the location of the landing of the telephone cable from the mainland. Water from a standpipe a field away, toilet anywhere below mean tide level, ancient propane gas stove, one hurricane lamp and a lumpy mattress on the floor. We made our own crab hooks and a lobster pot and roamed the shore at low tide. 

With the status of “PhD pending”, I applied to universities all over Britain only to receive the reply “3 to 5 yrs experience required”. My supervisor, himself moving to Canada, suggested getting experience abroad. Much against my English upbringing I wrote to Canadian and American universities touting my abilities. A new university, Lakehead, offered me an interview in a hotel in London, and was the first to offer me a job, “Lecturer” at $8,300 a year. My advisor said “Take it. You can move later.”. We were en route to Canada, at least for a few years. 

Emigrating is adventurous enough but we did rather add a certain style to it. All that we owned was packed in the hold of the Manchester Exporter when it caught fire 200 miles off Ireland and limped back to Liverpool, its holds partially filled with sea water to quench the fire. After a 27 hr Greyhound Bus journey from Montreal to Port Arthur we were greeted with a telegram. “Regret, all is lost”. We had arrived for our new life each holding a suitcase. It could have been a disaster to our young marriage. Instead it bonded us further. “We can do this.”

Jenny had long legs (the only reason I asked her to marry me, I claim) and arrived at LU to find she wore the shortest skirts by far, Port Arthur fashions lagging behind the UK. Many years later people recalled her short skirts and black and white Mod dresses. “Two inches below C level” was the Brit expression. 

Kevin was born in July 1968, six weeks premature (but surely nothing to do with portaging a canoe the previous weekend). Our earliest photo is of Jenny feeding him in the hospital where he spent the first two weeks of his life. 

Warned not to have another baby unless she risked not walking again, we, as Jenny put it, consulted the Eaton’s Catalogue, and Jacqui joined the family as a tiny baby. Adoption in those days was an uncomplicated process, though during our 6 month “probation” Jenny lived in concern, needlessly, about having her taken back.

Jenny became the classic stay at home Mum, a financial possibility in those days. She never regretted having been there when the kids came home from school. She was moderately strict, with established boundaries and consequences of overstep made perfectly clear. We must have done something right, for both our kids grew up to be responsible, nice adults with long term marriages, despite our total lack of training at child rearing and without the assistance and advice of nearby grandmothers. 

We very nearly came apart at the nine year point, one arena of our marriage not going at all well, as can be imagined. So, we sat down and both wrote a list of Pros and Cons and rank ordered them. What we had together far outweighed the Cons. We looked at each other and said “We can do this.” And we did. A long marriage built upon friendship, companionship and trust. 56 years! (As my Dad noted it depended how one said that. I inherit my sense of humour from him. I am entirely his fault.)

It was a long process, but I gradually persuaded Jenny that she had far more ability than she had so often been told. I babysat while she apprehensively enrolled in her first evening course at LU. She loved it and that began 14 yrs of evening courses, taking a wide range of courses that happened to be available in the evenings. Ironically, that is the kind of education universities were first established for. With her BA General degree (no Major) I often described her as “She’s the one who is educated, I’m simply piled higher and deeper.” Our kids dubbed her “Curious George” and her thirst for finding out new things and trying new things never wavered. I often referred to her as “The Oracle” and depended on her for her special love of words and etymology. “What word would you use to ….” “Ah, that’s just right, thank you.”

Among the many creative skills she had was that of acting. She took the lead role as Hedder Gabler in Cambrian’s production of Ibsen’s difficult play and in a lighter production of Ring Around the Moon. But her starring role was as Queen Elizabeth the 1st in costumed concert productions of the Consortium Aurora Borealis. First appearing as a comely Lady in Waiting in the court of King Henry the 8th, she took the regal role of Queen Elizabeth the 1st in her stride, a number of times. At one concert, she delivered, wholly from memory, the famed Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, initially delivered on 9 August 1588 to the land forces assembled at Tilbury in Essex in preparation for repelling the expected invasion by the Spanish Armada. As she ended, there were those amazing few moments of utter silence before thunderous applause. 

Story: The occasion was the Mayor’s Annual Luncheon, not long after the infamous Mayor Assef had patted the visiting Queen Elizabeth the 2nd on the bum and thanked Prince Philip for bringing his charming wife. We, as Queen Elizabeth 1st and Lord Cecil (one of her close advisors who actually died a natural death), were invited to attend as part of the entertainment. We devised a graceful dance routine that certainly looked historically appropriate, frightfully regal, and with me with a white handkerchief fluttering in my hand. Later, Mayor Jack Masters invited the Queen to cut the huge cake. But, her voluminous skirts were such that she could not get close enough to the table. Jenny haughtily announced, “My man, I command you to cut the cake on my behalf.” Jack took the big knife and stretched across the table to reach the far side of the big slab cake. At which point, improvising as ever, Jenny very obviously looked at his bum, then looked at the audience, and, folding her fan, gave his bum a smart tap. The inference was so obvious. The audience broke up and Jack could not stop laughing. Jenny’s face remained regal and unsmiling. She had taken just revenge.

We both got in trouble from time to time because of our British sense of humour, particularly a play on words or the “double entendre”.  We blamed it entirely on our upbringing. We held a pot luck and our neighbour arrived at the back door, oven gloves holding a hot tray. “You should feel my hot buns” she said as she came in. Tempting, but really not plausible in the circumstances.

We seem to have had the bad habit of picking up “Sorta Daughters”, all three of which are with us today. For various reasons, they came to live with us for a year or two until their lives straightened out enough to move on. And, all these years later they still often refer to us as Mum and Dad. I suppose the most obvious is Mabel, who came to Canada age 15. I recall well, the odd looks in the grocery store as Mabel called out across the aisles “Mum, should we get some of these.” On one occasion, unable to resist, I looked directly at one puzzled woman and said seriously “It must have been the delivery man.” On the birth of her first son she rang us. “Mum, Dad, you have a black grandchild”. Zephaniah, 20 months, with us today, is our third.

Initially attracted by the field of Social Work, Jenny completed her HBSW at LU, but quickly decided that it was not quite for her. I was granted a 6 month sabbatical to do research and write papers in the Winter of 1999. In a bold move Jenny wrote to the head of the Pastoral Care program at the huge Breckenridge hospital in Austen, Texas, asking if she could apply for a 4 month Chaplaincy Internship, a very forward looking and respected program. She was admitted. I then wrote to the University of Texas asking if I could come to do research and writing on campus, no office required. I received a magic card titled “Visiting Scholar”, a card with which I could enter any of their 15 libraries, use the student union facilities and even hang my coat in the Geology Department if needed. In appalling weather, we abandoned Kevin and Jacqui, technically old enough to fend for themselves, and drove down to Austen, Texas. After a short hotel stay, we had an unfurnished apartment, rented basic furniture, signed out paintings from the Austen Public Library and set up a temporary home. 

The internship was a very thorough and gruelling one, and she found herself chaplain to the Adult ER and to the Children’s Emergency Ward, meeting helicopters landing on the roof, present in operating rooms and at the side of people dying. She was partnered with an Oblate Brother, Patrick, close to our son’s age, whom she referred to as her “Priestling”.  Several years later on a visit to see her Mum in the UK, she flew to Rome and stayed at the Oblate Residence in the Vatican where Patrick was now studying. One day he asked her to join him at Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica.  She was going to sit while he went forward, but he motioned her to join him and so, though not Roman Catholic, she took Communion and, as Patrick commented afterwards, apparently said all the responses at Mass. Some things are not easily explained. We expect Patrick to be Pope one day.

Returning to Thunder Bay, she became the first Chaplain at the Cancer Centre, then attached to the Port Arthur Hospital campus. She roamed the corridors and wards talking with patients and nurses (who are also in need of pastoral care), meeting with families in the privacy of her office and helping many people die peacefully. 

Ultimately, she left and became a Grief Counsellor for Blake Funeral Chapel. I thought  of it as out of the frying pan into the fire, but as Jenny said, now she was helping families deal with their grief, very different in her view. She retired in 2001 when I did, apparently not ready to keep me in the style to which I was accustomed. 

I am immensely proud of her work as Chaplain and Grief Counsellor. No disrespect intended to chaplains who are are retired clergy, but the Breckenridge internship program taught Jenny to act as a non denominational, all and no faith counsellor. She quietly studied world faiths to gain some understanding of them, ready to talk to anyone. Long after she retired, people would come up to her in the mall or street and thank her. She seemed to have a label above her that read “Compassionate”, for quite often I would find her in earnest conversation with a complete stranger, recognize that she was in counselling mode and wait patiently at a distance until she was finished. 

Story: Told against herself. One of her grief counselling visits was to see a man who had recently lost his long time male partner. During their chat he tearfully told her that he he simply could not bear to look at his partner’s urn and had put it away in the closet. Ever unpredictable, Jenny said, “Well, in the circumstances that seems eminently appropriate.” They both belly laughed uncontrollably. When her client recovered, he said he felt so much better, opened the closet door and placed the urn on the mantle shelf. Well, that is one form of grief counselling!

When the new TB hospital was built, MEMO was given the opportunity of removing unwanted equipment from the Port Arthur and the McKellar Hospitals and sending it to Cuba. Never having learned to say “No” convincingly, we spent two months of one summer inventorying every piece of equipment, assigning individual codes and building a huge Excel spreadsheet for each hospital. It was at times eerie, wandering the silent corridors and exploring the sub basements, crammed with parts and broken bits. It was a huge job, much bigger and more complicated than anyone had realized - analog X-Ray machines, darkrooms, huge steam autoclaves…..But, we did it - together. 

Jenny was proud to be a Rotarian. She was nominated by the Salvation Army member of my Club, who knew her well from her Chairmanship of a Salvation Army committee. The club was all male. She was denied membership without explanation. Denial is usually because the candidate is known to run an unethical business. Her nomination was submitted again. Denied again, but this time the Salvation Army member broke protocol and demanded a full explanation from the Board. They had none. Jenny became the first female member of the Club. A long time member had said to her that he would resign if she was made a member. Jenny replied “What a pity, I’ll miss you.” After attending one District Conference, she was well known.

Long practiced at working together, we were soon appointed Co-Chairs of District 5580 Youth Exchange Program, a volunteer task we did together for 7 years. District 5580 covers North Dakota, Minnesota north of the Twin Cities, part of Michigan and part of NW Ontario. We travelled extensively through this huge area, visiting clubs and conducting Outward Bound interviews of High School candidates thinking of going abroad for a year. We also initiated contacts with our equivalent officers in many countries, seeking to exchange Inbound students, who would be hosted by members of 5580 clubs and study in local high schools. It was a huge task but an immensely rewarding one. A year abroad is life changing and we have many thank you letters from District students and foreign students of many countries telling us how this experience impacted their lives, matured them and opened new opportunities for them. We had only a small office budget, no travel expenses, so we spent many hours and dollars in this work. One year, we brought in students from 29 countries, our record. Jenny was an ideal “den mother”. Of necessity, even then, I remained aloof, leaving the hugging and touching to Jenny.  Of course, once again, the way we operated Youth Exchange would be impossible today. We never went through any security checks. We were asked to do a task and expected to do it well, and within the ethical context of Rotary International. The whole program is now centralized in an entirely different way. 

I retired in December 2001 and Jenny said “We need to leave town and make a clean break.” We took our trailer out to BC for Kevin and Katy’s wedding and then spent several months exploring the west coast, turning inland before reaching San Francisco. At Easter we found ourselves in a primitive campground called “Hole in the Wall”, about 15 km into the Mohave Desert National Preserve. Water, but no sewer or electricity. The staff at the Visitor Centre, said “If you want sewer you can come back as a campground host.”

We applied to the National Park Service, equipped our trailer with a solar panel and for the winter’s of 2003 and 2004 were campground hosts, and a lot more. We operated the Visitor Centre at times, raising and lowering the American flag and learning to fold it in that triangle and not let it touch the ground. We were given one day a week to explore on our own, the more we knew about the huge area the better. We asked whether we could run a field trip on Saturdays, present a powerpoint slide show in the evening and were permitted to. Our supervisor told us that a field trip down the Hole in The Wall Canyon should not be longer than 1 hour and should have a theme. Our theme was “Everything of interest to be seen on the trail” but we did not tell her that. Some Saturdays we would return to the Visitor Centre 2 hours or more later, still answering questions from our group of visitors. Jenny had quickly learned much about the desert floral and faunal assemblages and I focussed on the geology, geomorphology and archaeology. 

We somehow surpassed ourselves and annoyed someone in a head office miles away by completing a plant trail between the campground and visitor centre swiftly and efficiently, a project that head office had been mulling for several years. If asked, Jenny would sum up the NPS as a “bit anal”.

Coincidentally (or otherwise) we volunteered to take part in Earth Day at the school in Needles, the nearest community to which we had been going to for their weekly Rotary meeting. It was quite an experience, and confirmed that I should be teaching adults. The enthusiasm and energy of those three classes we took was exhausting. Recovering in the teacher’s common room afterwards, a lady from the Bureau of Land Management came over and said, “If you ever want to work for us, let me know.” 

From 2005 to 2014 we worked as volunteers for the BLM out of Needles. The first year we arrived, they showed us a list of projects that their small underfunded and understaffed office could not handle. “Where would you like to start” we were asked. Well, the Crucifixion Thorn does not, according to the book, grow in California, but they had a report of one perhaps being seen in a wash. We were assigned office space and a 4 wheel drive vehicle, given radio call in codes with San Bernardino Dispatch, and off we went. Three weeks later we had located, GPS’ed, photographed and health assessed 53 Crucifixion Thorn bushes growing down the wash. We set it up as a repeatable survey, to be conducted again at a later date so that the health and future of these rare plants could be assessed. “What would you like to do next?’ 

Staying in a small campground every year we did numerous projects, driving and walking all across the huge Mohave Desert. It was a win win situation. We got to explore the desert and photograph plants, snakes, scorpions etc in a Federal Government vehicle which, in theory, could be located if we did not radio in by 6.00pm (but in the mountains radio contact was often not active). The BLM got well documented research reports, for free, in return. We were asked by someone why we were not armed when out in the desert. Said Jenny, “There is nobody else out there but us.” In fact we did meet a couple of desert dwellers over the years, anti government, anti social people who sought isolation. Very interesting people, though perhaps more than a little crazy. 

Jenny did much of the 4W Driving while I navigated. I wish you could see one of the short videos I took of us driving up narrow canyons, way beyond the point at which I would have stopped, sometimes leaving me wondering how we would ever turn around. More than once we got centred by a big rock, all four wheels off the ground. Jenny leaped out, laughing, to take photos while I leapt out to assess how we might jack ourselves out of this one. One valley we needed to enter was blocked by a huge boulder. Jenny tightened her seat belt so that she could not slide into the passenger seat and drove up the side of the wash such that the truck was at a perilous angle before rounding it successfully. I was out of the truck taking the photo. 

Another time, crossing a large playa (a dry lake bed), Jenny wondered “What would it be like to drive at 60 mph with one’s eyes closed?” She aligned the vehicle, closed her eyes and accelerated. My hand hovered over the wheel ready to steer if necessary. At the 60 mph mark she kept going, the far shore approaching rapidly. “Stop, stop” I urged. Just in time.

Our winters in the south were halted with Jenny’s diagnosis of breast cancer in mid 2014. That winter we added a ground floor extension to the house and, unable to wield a hammer, she acted as researcher and orderer of all the things we needed. She was pronounced cancer free after surgery and breast reconstruction. Her oncologist retired shortly after and she did fall between two stools, failing to obtain regular follow ups as a result. Breast cancer patients are often told that once past the 5 year mark they are safe. Not so. It is not that the doctors are untruthful, but cancer cells can mask themselves as other cells and lurk in the shadows undetected. Jenny would be the first to urge you all, whether female or male, to firmly insist on regular check ups.

A diversion. The number of times I have found myself saying “OMG, I can’t take her anywhere” is legion and the stories numerous. Today, two memorable ones comes to mind.

Story: Driving down to Duluth, Jenny exceeded the speed limit on the divided highway just before the city. A sheriff’s car appeared out of nowhere and pulled us over. A tall, rather handsome young officer approached. “Who owns this vehicle?” “I do” said Jenny. “Who’s your passenger?” “My husband” said Jenny. Clearly surprised that the man of the family did not own the vehicle, the officer proceeded. “Your age, height and weight, Ma’am?” Jenny said “Do I have to tell you?” “Yes” he replied. Jenny gave him her stats and he wrote a ticket. “Do you have any questions, Ma’am?” “Yes” said Jenny, “What’s your age, height and weight?” I had visions of police cells, but without blinking, he replied giving his details. “Thank you” said Jenny, “and very nice too.” We continued our journey.

Story: We were at a cross cultural wedding, half the congregation ebony, half pink. After the ceremony, while people milled around in the lobby before setting off for the reception, Jenny suddenly appeared in the middle, a tall, handsome black man on each arm. At which point she exclaimed loudly “Look, Oreo Cookie”. Everyone laughed. Again, I heard myself say, “OMG, I can’t take her anywhere.” 

On our adventures in China in 2018 and in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand in 2019, her painful hip sometimes limited her and she chose to rest rather than see every detail of the places we were visiting. She had both rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis that was clearly getting worse. In hindsight, the bone cancer was probably already developing. We planned a less taxing trip to South America for 2020, but Covid intervened and, asthmatic and bronchitic since childhood, we went into voluntary isolation and I into a very restricted lifestyle to protect her as much as possible. She was perfectly happy at home. 

In early 2021 her arthritis was much worse and then, in July, her ribs and her back began to be very painful. This was more than arthritis. A CT scan was booked for September 30th, many weeks ahead. We received four changes of date for a follow up at the hospital, the last for October 21st before we would know the results of the scan. 

On October the 12th her pain was so intense that she was taken to emergency. After checking for heart etc, the emergency doctor suggested a CT scan and Jenny told her she had just had one. The doctor went to check her files and returned ashen faced. “You don’t know?” She asked. There, in the file, dated September 30th, was the report stating that her 2014 breast cancer had metastasized to her hip, ribs and spine. To find the out in the ER was shocking. Two days later she had her first appointment in the Cancer Care Centre. 

Our aim was for her to become well enough and less affected by the many side effects of her medications, so that she could enjoy her garden in the summer, but that was not to be. She became increasingly confused, delusional at times, and it seems that her cancer had metastasized to her meningeal fluid, from which every organ can be reached. On the Friday she was Jenny, a bit out of it at times, on Saturday she was unable to communicate at all and on Sunday she transitioned from life to after life. But, her very great wish was achieved. She passed at home, with the view of the Giant, her two dogs on the bed, her small family with her and her soulmate tending to her as promised in our wedding vows. She chose her own moment to leave.

There was much potential life in her yet, but her premonition that she had not long was right. We had hoped for years, but it was eight months only. We had plenty of time to talk so we parted complete. Yes, a great loss, but we started today by deciding to take the High road. She made the best of the baggage she had to carry, she helped and influenced many people, she was a good mother and a loving partner in life. 

A life well lived. A life to celebrate.

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(Back to Pastor Matthew)

July 27th 2020