Farewell to Phemie - #2
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My first thought about Phemie is a wish that I had known her a lot longer. She was very involved with Age Concern and spent a great deal of time looking after her ‘old folk’, providing lifts for them, taking them shopping and providing refreshments for them to name but a few ways she did this. She must have filled every available moment doing something useful; and when she wasn’t doing something at Church or for ‘Age Concern’, she was baking cakes, making marmalade or taking care of her plants. She was also quite good at using the internet. It was so good that that all the work she did for the community was acknowledged by the Epsom and Ewell Council when she won the Active Citizen Award in 2008. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she was determined that it should not change her life in any way, and it would not stop her from doing everything she set her mind to. She still continued with all her work with ‘Age Concern’ and with all her jobs at Church and on the Women’s Church Council. She would hate it whenever she was told she could not drive her car because of the drugs she was taking. Nothing was going to prevent her from travelling to New Zealand to visit her family last year. Sometimes she would say to me ‘I don’t want to be a member of this club’, referring to the cancer and I would think, like everyone else, how unfair it was that she was. She was determined to beat the disease and even when we visited her in Princess Alice Hospice she was still talking about what she was going to do once she was home again. Many of us at Epsom U. R. C. will have very many fond memories of Phemie and will always remember this remarkable lady. |
I cannot remember when she actually started attending our church, but I soon became aware of this very dynamic person ready to take charge of catering for any large numbers on many different occasions. We very soon became friends and we found we worked very well together. She was a remarkable person with a great number of talents and an extremely caring nature. Nothing would faze her, whether it be catering for a joint church lunch, teas for pensioners or providing an early morning breakfast for the congregation.