Restoring faith

FUNERALS are not generally thought of as joyful occasions. The one which I attended yesterday in the village outside Cambridge where I live, however, certainly deserved the description joyful. Of course, there was sadness. We had gathered to lay to rest a woman aged 83 and, for her sons and grandchildren and for the many friends and neighbours who were there, it was most certainly a time of the sadness of farewell.

Yet that was not the prevailing mood. For Joan was one of the most positive people anyone present had known. She lived life to the full. She was constantly optimistic. She played an active and constructive part in many organisations in the village. She supported and encouraged people. And she was greatly loved.

One of her sons is an Anglican priest, and he conducted the funeral service and spoke about his mother's life - a task to which priests are accustomed, but one very difficult to perform when the relationship is so close. What he said immediately struck a chord with the large congregation because it accurately reflected what we all knew.

My mother, he began, was not a solemn person. She was certainly not. She observed life - and took part in life - with a keen sense of humour. She took what she did seriously, but she never took herself seriously. Even those who had known her for more than 30 years learnt new things about her. I did not know, for example, that she had in her youth been a member of the Communist party. Nor did I know that as a young woman she had ridden pillion, at great speed, on a motor cycle. I did not know those things, but they were not at all surprising, for she was always a person of strong beliefs and independence, and (unlike many people of strong beliefs) she always had a great sense of fun. She also had indomitable courage. She lost a lung from tuberculosis many years ago, and often had difficulty in breathing, but she never let that prevent her from doing things.

Her late husband, who died some 15 years ago, was a historian who gave a lifetime of service to the University of Cambridge and to his College, and who taught and inspired a generation of distinguished historians. He was equally at home in a gathering of eminent medievalists from around the world, and in a Workers' Educational Association class in the village, and so was Joan.

She herself left school with no formal qualifications (her father having had a career which took the family to different parts of world and provided Joan therefore with a peripatetic upbringing). Lack of qualifications mattered little, because she possessed high intelligence and good judgment - tempered with wisdom and humanity. Her chosen career was nursing, but she brought those qualities to everything that she did, long after giving up her full time job. It was typical of her that, in her seventies she took a history degree, with the Open University.

The village church was packed for the funeral. Old and young, people from traditional village families and newcomers like me, were there because she was our friend. She was an Anglican, and worked devotedly for the parish church, but she worked with equal devotion for and with people of other denominations and people with no religious beliefs. One of our neighbours in the village is a Sudanese, who is a Muslim and, as we expected, he was there; Joan was one of the first to make him welcome when he came to the village 20 years ago. My daughter made a special journey from London to be present because she, like many of her generation, had attended in the early 1970s a nursery school which Joan had run, and had developed a lasting gratitude and affection for her.

In recent months, as I have recorded in my "Cambridge Letters", Britain has been faced with many serious problems. On the international scene, as we all know, there are disputes and disasters, conflicts and crises, which at times seem overwhelming. And in any community, at the micro level, there are problems, disasters and conflicts, which can be just as overwhelming for those who live through them.

It was good to be reminded at Joan's funeral that in any community, there are also from time to time individuals who shine out with hope, and really make a difference to other people's lives. The funeral was indeed a joyous occasion.

BILL KIRKMAN

The author is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. E-mail him at wpk1000@cam.ac.uk

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