RACHEL
I am Brin, Rachel’s first husband and father of Ruth. I lived with Rachel as husband, friend and co-parent for nearly 30 years. I want to talk about Rachel as child, daughter and mother.
I met Rachel at primary school. Most of you will recognise the little girl that I remember:
the girl who had to be coaxed into a skirt for school, but otherwise always wore trousers;
the girl perpetually climbing trees on the common;
the girl so good at dribbling a football she was once asked to demonstrate how to do it to the boys;
the girl with her nose in a book far too old for her; and
a fiercely competitive and sometimes rather anxious little girl, who worked hard at her studies and played games to win.
I remember too her relationship with my friend her brother Hugo. Primary school age brothers and sisters rarely play with and live their lives together. Yet Hugo and Rachel did so, and, through their own strong bond, created a group of friends, also mixed in gender and age, that did much together.
Rachel grew older, delighting her parents by her activities and successes:
they were proud when she did well academically and Tiffins was followed by Oxford, and later successes at Warwick and the London Business School;
they were proud of her participation in the Aldermarston marches of the 1960s, reflecting in particular Mike’s pacifist commitment in the war;
they were proud of her two years work as a volunteer teacher in Ethiopia; and
they were proud too of her subsequent success at work.
Brin and Rachel in Ethiopia
But this does not reflect the inner quality of the relationship between Rachel and her parents Mike and Barbara. With Mike she walked and climbed and talked and wrangled affectionately around anything and everything. From Barbara she received love and huge emotional support. She in turn loved and supported Barbara, both practically and by her presence, even if she never quite came up to scratch on the housework. She loved and gave herself to them both generously, especially in the awful period around Mike’s sad death five years ago.
Finally Rachel as mother. The first thing to say is that Ruth was not the only child important to her. For Alex and Paul in particular, Rachel was an abiding presence during much of their childhood. Rachel simply loved being with children. We remember:
the endless succession of children, most recently Kieron and Sian, who, roped together, she patiently guided up the rocks;
the many children like Rachel, Tom and Maddy who have sat on her lap for their bedtime story;
her open and welcoming attitude to Ruth's friends, who came to her house not just to see Ruth but because Rachel made them feel so much at ease; and
- the way that at Ruth's 21st birthday party, just three weeks ago, she exerted herself to introduce Ruth’s newer University friends to her older Sheffield friends.
I come to Rachel and Ruth. Just as Rachel was important for more than one child, Ruth has had more than two parents. Rachel shared Ruth with Sheona, Andrew and myself without a shred of possessiveness, in a co-operative enterprise. Ruth’s bond with Rachel though was especially deep, evolving from the necessary supervision of a small child to a warm friendship as adult equals, but all the time suffused in an unchanging and certain mutual love. Rachel had the courage, especially in Ruth's early teenage years, to let go and not to fuss, and for a while one room in the house became a refuge for part of teenage Fulwood, leading to the famous incident when one of Ruth's friends was rescued in her pyjamas by her irate parents from our malicious influence in the middle of the night.
Rachel's sure touch as a mother, from which we all learnt, was not an accident. I think its roots lay in the way she herself had been trusted as a child by Mike and Barbara, an example that had influenced me largely intellectually but Rachel perhaps more fundamentally. I hope people understand me when I say that the real triumph of Rachel as mother is that she has created a strong mature and confident woman in Ruth, who knows what it is both to be loved and to love, and, who though devastated by Rachel’s untimely death, will have the strength to recover from it.
- Brian Heatley
