Tribute to Jill

Thank you all for coming today as we bid farewell to Jill.  I know that I won’t be able to greet all of you afterwards because of the crush of people, but I wanted to begin by thanking you for being here today.  It’s a tribute to how many lives Jill touched.

As, I think, all of you know, Jill had very many loves in her life.  I’m uncertain about the order in which they should come, but dogs, music and Harriet are vying for the top spot.

Dogs were one of Jill’s most consistent loves.  Loyal, faithful, obedient (mostly), warm and cuddly (some of which attributes I shared).  At her family home in Chesterfield there were always dogs, and she was quite open about being brought up by Angus, a rough collie.  Perhaps a more sensible upbringing than one trusted solely to parents.

She was immensely pleased when I got a job which enabled me to work from home with USPG, and we could for the first time have a dog.  Asa, the tri-coloured chip hound brought her huge pleasure.  Having Asa for 17 ½ years was a significant period of our life together, and one which was hugely enriching for both of us.

Asa, of course, preceded Harriet by a few years.  I’m not certain that Harriet would say that she was brought up by him (he was far too independent) but he was certainly a constant presence and a significant part of her childhood.

Harriet was, and is, a principal source of love and joy to share with Jill.  Having had a very strained relationship with her own mother, Joyce, Jill was determined to enjoy life with Harriet and enable her to flourish to become the person you know today.  I think that this is one of Jill’s greatest achievements.

Like so many of us, Jill had ambitions and vocations that she was never able to fulfil.  Whilst at school she wanted to train as a speech and language therapist – but her school thought that was a waste of her talent and steered her into English literature.  I think the appropriate phrase is that Jill failed to thrive, and eventually she trained at the Royal London as a nurse.

She also, consistently and over a very long period, felt a calling to ordained ministry.  For many years of our married life, it was Jill who had the theology degree – she graduated a couple of weeks before we married in 1999, having undertaken the course part time.  Despite this deep and sincere calling, she was reluctant to push – and when she did, she often encountered resistance.  More on this though later.

Jill was also a voracious reader as many of you know.  Crime novels were high on her reading list – but she didn’t stick to one author or genre.  In fact, the only books she didn’t read were history, non-fiction and biography.  Thanks must go to all of you who supported her habit this over the last few years.  I’m not entirely certain what we’re going to do with the mountain of books we do have.  Certainly, every time we’ve moved, the removals men haven’t hidden their feelings about the huge quantities that they’ve had to carry. 

I have been very fortunate to form a creative partnership with Jill, not least in the kitchen.  The number of people that Jill can cook with is very small – and I’m honoured to have been part of that exclusive group.  We rarely cooked from recipes, using them more as inspiration than a sacrosanct text.  Diet though was tricky.  I’m afraid that I deprived her of much tomato eating – something I was regularly reminded of.  We created memorable feasts together for ourselves, our families, friends and at Bickersteth.  Bread was Jill’s domain, though she rarely made it, and it’s a pleasure to see that Harriet has picked up her mother’s love of baking.  (I’ve got some work to do though with Harriet on the other aspects of food!)

Music though was the common thread throughout her life.  She began singing at school, and, had circumstances been different, might have been encouraged to take it up professionally.  Jacque, her cousin, has fond memories of Jill singing “She wears red feathers and a hooli-hooli skirt” and friends from Hailey might well remember her rendition of “Forty-seven ginger headed sailors”.  You’re probably relieved that they didn’t make the musical cut, though I have to say I was very tempted.

In many ways, thinking of Jill’s life in terms of music is as good a metaphor as I can come up with.  She sang both soprano and alto parts, though it was the upper alto part she was most at home with.  One of the reasons for choosing the mass setting for the requiem last night was that it gives the starring role to the alto line – there is no soprano.  There was a list of composers that she knew couldn’t write for alto, and whom she avoided whenever possible.  Some of you will know exactly what I mean.

One of Jill’s favourite books was the Earthsea series by Ursula le Guin.  One of the conceits of the novels is that change is effected by singing, and that, through song, we discover who we truly are and what we are truly meant to be.

In these terms, Jill lived her life as a song.  Like a good piece of baroque music, faith was always present in everything she did and sang, rather like a basso continuo.  Not always obvious, frequently overshadowed, yet supporting the rest of Jill’s music which soared overhead.  Without it, the music is much diminished.  She brought in many other parts and voices to contribute to her song, and I appreciated – and appreciate – being part of the greater music that she made.

And yet, amidst all of this, something very quietly began to intrude, that was not of Jill’s making nor desire.  Through 2019, and the lockdown in 2020, this interruption – rather like a drum beating very softly in the background – began to make itself known and felt more strongly, pushing its way into the song that Jill was singing.  She was given the all clear in September 2020, but it still didn’t go away, and instead grew in intensity, starting to dominate all areas of Jill’s life.  Her diet began to change quite subtly; foods she loved she found she wasn’t able to tolerate.  Gradually, and imperceptibly the interruption in her song was becoming stronger and stronger.  Part of the problem was that the cancer that Jill had was almost impossible to detect.  She had all the signs and symptoms of ovarian cancer, and, yet the scans showed no sign of disease.  Peritoneal cancer is the same type of cell, just not in the ovaries.  By the time that there was something that could be picked up, it was well advanced.

Since 2021 that drum beat of cancer, intruding into Jill’s song, has become steadily stronger; drowning out the song that Jill wished to sing.  It didn’t stop her, though.  She continued making her own music – aided by almost constant chemotherapy, and supported by therapy dogs (not least our very own Max who’s with us today).  By the time that Jill did eventually get on to the selection process of ordained ministry, it was clear that she was really quite unwell, though still not diagnosed.  Even had Jill been recommended, she probably wouldn’t have been able to start the course, let alone complete it.  That might have been so much worse.

Whilst the cancer might have temporarily drowned out her music, that figured bass of faith continued to the end.  If I know Jill, she’ll have already joined the choir – O, for a thousand tongues -  holding the alto line.  Like the wizard in the Earthsea novels, she’s now discovering what it is to truly sing the song of creation, no longer for her a song of love unknown, and to understand what it actually means.  Something that we left behind have yet to discover for ourselves, for whilst we see through a glass darkly, Jill lives in the glorious light of the resurrection.  May she rest in peace, and rise in glory.