Despite being only 4”11, June was one of the biggest characters in our family. At family gatherings her stories, and the way that she delivered them, commanded the attention of the entire room. One of the more recent gems involved a blind man passing his driving test. Preparing this speech, we went through a number of June’s different tales and laughed our heads off. We tried to write them down to retell but they were all either too scandalous or politically incorrect to repeat to a room full of people.
June had a wicked sense of humour. She always told Mark that he was her favourite son-in-law. It took a while (a long while) for him to realise he was her only son-in-law.
When asked to give Ken a break from bossing him about she promptly picked up her cane and said she would give him a break, “right over the top of his head”. However, often when he left the room on an errand she would lean in close, lower her voice (not something she did too often) and say how lovely he was, and that he took great care of her and how well he does. As soon as he walked back in the room she would pass judgement on his task mastering. Flower arrangement? Or, as she put it, “WHAT flower arrangement?”
Everything about June was immaculate: her house, garden and appearance. She did not tolerate disorder or mess. In spite of this, she absolutely adored her dog Taffy. Indeed, it was not family photos displayed at her hospital bedside, but a lovely big portrait of Taffy, the most chaotic and energetic thing allowed to enter her house in a long time. When Ken dared to suggest that maybe Taffy might be too hard to handle she told him she would rather get rid of him than the dog.
June was extremely artistic and creative and this shone through in her beautiful garden and all of her artwork. In her last few weeks she made duvet covers, cushions, a skirt and baked a cake. This is more than most of us could ever really manage to achieve.
Except for her known hatred of thunderstorms, she always seemed fearless. We will never forget her standing in front of our 2 large dogs, both of which individually outweighed her by a good 3 stone waving a bag of sausage treats and commenting on how lovely they were as they were revving up ready to charge.
June was always interested in and proud of our achievements and what we had been up to. If we ever broke any news to her a thoughtful card in the post would follow saying how happy she was for us. It’s very strange to think of how different our family is now going to be, or to imagine family events without the powerhouse that was June holding court and making us all laugh.
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