Jeans Eulogy
Good Morning

Firstly I want to thank all of you here in the chapel for being kind enough to help us say goodbye to my little sister. She would be delighted to see you all here - all her friends and of course her family all around us today.

Most of you will have known Jean in her adult years as a competent medical practitioner jointly running her nursing home in days gone by -
or as a older lady being looked after so well in hospital and at  Ashbourne Court Care Home.

As her brother I naturally have the advantage of knowing her from her birth on Saturday June 9th 1934 at our family home Elmwood (now No 14) on The Oval on Tranmere Park just outside the small Yorkshire town of Guiseley. The only claim to fame connected with Guiseley is that it is the birthplace of the Harry Ramsden Fish and Chip Empire!

My first memory of Jean is of Nurse Ross and Dr Rankin attending Mum on that June day. When Dr Rankin called a couple of days later I am told I suggested he take Jean back as she was so noisy!  I was only two and three quarters!

As a small infant Jean could crawl for England. Put  her down anywhere and she was off, carpet, lawn, sandy beach at Prestatyn in N Wales, where we spent several Summer holidays. nothing delayed her, she was off and Daddy spent his time chasing and recovering his blue eyed laughing little girl.

We both attended Oxford Road Council School in Guiseley where Miss Bell (Class One) and 3 years later Miss Watkinson (Class Four) gave us both a most competent educational start in life.

Jean became a Brownie aged 5 and then a keen Guide and then a Ranger confirming her ongoing Christian faith and early evidence of her caring nature I like to think.

From Oxford Road we both went to Prince Henry`s Grammar School in Otley under Headmaster John Wilde. Jean got a competent School Certificate before following her heart`s desire of being a Nurse - something she had decided upon aged just nine.

She trained at The Royal Infirmary in Bradford gaining her SRN and then her SRM before becoming Accident and Emergency Sister at BRI and then changing tack "Going on the District" on the opposite side of Bradford to our home in Guiseley. She was of course much loved by her "Lady and Gentlemen" patients.

After a minor road accident near Halifax she decided to return to Hospital work in Northampton becoming Deputy Matron at their Training Hospital there. It was in Northampton she met Sonny Syani whom she married in August 1972 and with whom she had two lovely children Richard and Joanne. They fulfilled her life`s dream - a nice home and a family to love and look after.
Both her young people became fine modern young people who living as they did in Basingstoke my wife Pat & I in truth saw very little of from our home in Sheffield.

Jean moved back to Yorkshire after her divorce from Sonny and changed her surname to Craven - her paternal grandma`s family name

It was a dreadful day in December 1995 when Richard visiting his Mum before Christmas somehow fell off the top of a rocky outcrop near Ilkley and passed away in the cold of a winter night.

Jean returned to the Basingstoke area to be near to Jo and I had the honour of being M.C, at Jo and Dan`s wedding here in Andover just a few years ago.

Their two young people Victor and Tabitha gave Jean great joy and a happy retirement project after retiring from running her own retirement home all before the concentration lapsed and the dementia took over.

I do want you to know that I am so proud to call Jean my very best Sister!

And so I come to the end of the saddest story I have ever told, We have to say goodbye to my dearest little sister. She is now with her Mummy and her beloved Daddy and I suppose in the fullness of time I will join them in that home in the sky.

Siblings are part of you and they always will be.

Goodbye my little sister. May the Good Lord Bless you and keep you till we meet again

Rest in Peace darling girl.