Kath's Eulogy

This is the eulogy for my wife Kath that I read at her funeral service. I'm posting this in the hope that it may help other people. If you have to write something like this please feel free to use my ideas. (She was sometimes Kath, sometimes Kathy, depending on who she was talking to.)

This is the story of a life marked out by shared joys and love gladly given.
Kath, as she was usually known, was born in 1952 on the way to Horsham, and that’s where her birth was registered. Growing up with one parent in the diplomatic service and the other doing classified work for the government, she spent some time in Germany as a child.
In the early 1970s, when she was on her way to qualifying as a pharmacist, and I was trying to get into to Cambridge to read Engineering, a friend called Dave persuaded me to come to a house church meeting. Sitting on the opposite side of the room there was this vision of Titian haired loveliness. I was instantly captured by her beauty and her quick-witted intelligence, but most of all by her warmth and genuine care for everyone around her.
Amazingly she fell for me at the same moment.
Yes, it really was eyes across a crowded room, love at first sight. Some people say it doesn’t happen but it did. Shortly after we knew that we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives.
Of course we had a lot of technical problems. I had to go away to Cambridge to study, she was trying to establish a medical career. My mother didn’t approve, although my father (also an engineer) was instantly taken by a girl who was remarkably handy with a set of spanners.
I was working hard in Cambridge and she came up to see me from time to time. I remember one summer afternoon when she sat in a punt wearing a pale blue swimsuit while I polled up to Grantchester. She tried to punt back but her lack of balance defeated her and I had to take over.
She loved animals with a passion, particularly horses and dogs, and I acquired that love from her, starting with her family’s delightful if mischievous collie called Sam.
She was also an excellent cook, to the point that she acquired the nickname “Fan” from favourable comparisons with the late Mrs. Craddock.
She told me about the horses she had known, and one evening when I wanted to take her out she preferred to watch show jumping on TV. There was only one way to deal with this. I had to learn to ride. I was never anything like as good as she was in the saddle, but we had some great times together, just hacking out.
I graduated, we danced the night away at the Johnian May Ball, and I got an offer of a computer job first in the City, then on Wall Street, which kept us apart for a few months, but our hearts were still together.
Her love of horses extended to racing, something we enjoyed together, and she was good at spotting winners, although our betting was restricted to tiny stakes.
We carried on dating for years, and finally in 1988 I was well established in a new career in television, and she was managing a Pharmacy. I bought a house in Crowthorne and were married in the old Baptist church in Bracknell.
The next twenty eight years we simply spent being happy and travelling the world. We explored the USA, went to Hong Kong three times, stood on the tip of Gibraltar looking across at the African coast, dined in the tallest building in the southern hemisphere and caught one of the first trains through the channel tunnel.
Her career developed and I was able to help her set up in her own business as a locum. A combination of genuine concern for patients and encyclopaedic knowledge of the available drugs and their side effects made her much appreciated in the local pharmacies.
She had her riding horses, and having learned the love of these glorious animals from her I bought a pony and trap, on which we spent many happy afternoons and evenings meandering around the Bramshill woods.
It was during this period that she became known as “The Dragon”, for her insistence on the highest possible standards in pharmacy. Many times she would come home to tell me how an addict had tried to break the rules, or a doctor had made a prescribing error, then tried to argue with her and discovered what a fiery redhead can do. At the same time she would be telling me about a patient whose pain she had eased, or whose fear she had calmed, and who had come back with thanks, and often sweets or biscuits that she shared with the shop staff.
I learned many things from her, including how to cook beef properly, and why it is so important to keep up with the storyline of ‘The Archers’. Like any couple we had our disagreements, but I don’t remember our ever managing to keep an argument going for more that ten minutes.
In 2015 I was taken ill, and after this we realised that the old house in Crowthorne, perched at the top of a very steep hill, would be too much for us in retirement. A year later we moved into a brand new house in Andover, and carried on being ridiculously happy for another four and a half years.
Here she continued with her love of gardening, creating a complete vegetable garden in tubs at the back of the new house.
In August last year she noticed a problem with her leg and went into hospital for blood tests and scans. These revealed the presence of cancer, and she began chemotherapy at once. By Christmas the cancer was in remission and in January we thought we had won.
In May she was taken to hospital by ambulance, and we knew the cancer had returned. Despite chemotherapy she lost her final battle on Saturday 5th May when, as I held her hand and tried to reassure her, she finally slipped from me and her brave heart beat its last.
This story is not about that final pain, but about the time we knew each other, and the thirty two glorious years we shared as man and wife.
It is about dropping everything on a whim and rushing to Reading station to catch a train for Paddington so that we could have lunch in Chinatown. It is about staying in some of the best hotels, eating at the top of the old Word Trade Centre with the lights of Manhattan spread out before us and helicopters going underneath. It is about walking with dogs and jumping with horses, swimming with dolphins and getting to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It is the night we lay on the beach at midnight in the Florida Keys watching a meteor shower, it is filled with vineyards and horse shows, parties and romantic dinners. It is coming home with her favourite yellow roses for no reason other than to see the delight on her face. It is a tale of sharing starry nights and Michelin starred restaurants, and just being so happy together that we almost forgot what unhappiness was.
Now I must say goodbye for a while. The Christian faith that first brought us together teaches that God brings us to himself, and I believe that in a better world I will find her again, hold her hand and say, as I have said so many thousand times, “Kath, I love you.”