Carol's Cremation Service "Goodbye Carol" Eulogy Goodbye Carol Thank you all for coming to this very short and simple “Goodbye, Carol” Cremation Service. I really do need your help since on this occasion there is simply no one else who can talk of Carol as I can. However, if you break down I will too, so please hold it together – if you don’t I am in a mess!!!!!! This service gives us all an opportunity to quietly think about Carol and what she has meant to all of us here today – relatives and friends who have known Carol for many, many years, some more than me, whilst others may only have known Carol for a relatively short time. Carol has left her mark upon us all and I know that we will all miss her enormously. At this “Goodbye Carol” short service I just want talk about Carol, to remember here and say goodbye. Carol was known to us all in varying degrees and I know what she has meant to us all. Let me just refer to some of YOUR comments on the sympathy cards I have received: Carol has always been so friendly and someone to feel comfortable with. We will really miss Carol’s sunny optimistic nature, not to mention her sparkle in every way. Part of our hearts have gone from us,today. Will miss her smile that lit up every room. It’s amazing how one person can have such an effect on your life. Our lives will be dramatically changed without Carol’s laughter and all the great times we have shared together. Carol was the loveliest, cheeriest person I know, she endured such a lot but always came out smiling. Carol was a wonderful, kind and caring person. We will always remember Carol as a very vibrant person with lots of good humour. We had a lot of fun together. We loved her many, many qualities and the aura of fun she created. Every once in a while we are lucky enough to meet someone special. It was such a pleasure to have Carol as a friend since we met 10 years ago. We will so, so miss her sparkly eyes and cheeky grin. Over the years we have become so fond of Carol and this is heart breaking. Carol was a wonderful lady who will be truly missed by us all. Carol was a very, very special lady. We have been truly blessed to have had Carol as our friend. We will always remember Carol’s ready smile and positive attitude to life. I shall remember Carol, warm, friendly and full of concern for the animals. Carol loved the animals – she was the only person we knew that remembered all of our animal’s names. Caring and loving and so sadly missed. Carol gave me love, affection and support and in between these three, fun and laughter. We considered Carol to be one of our best friends and we cannot express enough how much we appreciated her, friendship, hospitality, laughter and love. A truly lovely lady who always brought a smile to our faces, she will sadly missed. This is what you have said about Carol and I can only agree – to me she has been everything that anyone could wish for in a wife, she was beautiful and lovely, a great companion, lover and partner. I believe Carol and I were destined for each other – our marriage got stronger and stronger as the years went by. We just needed another 20 years to enjoy our perfect life together but Life and Death is so, so arbitrary – we have little or no say in the matter although Dr. Chan and his team really, really tried their best – he got on top of two aspects of the disease but the third was beyond him and it tragically took Carol fairly quickly in the end. Carol and I have so much confidence in Dr. Chan that I am intending to help raise funds to support his wider research into breast and ovarian cancer. As you will notice any donations are being directed to Dr. Chan’s local research charity. As we all have said, Carol’s happy, positive, friendly, optimistic, caring, loving, humorous and vibrant personality will be so missed by us all. She has left her mark, although her life has been cut so, so short. No more the friendly happy face amongst us and we will, I am sure, be much, much the worse for her not being there. There have been so many occasions when Carol has been instrumental in ensuring that we all had a good time. Philip and our other skiing friends will remember in La Pub in Tignes the evening when she laughed, laughed and laughed for 30/35 minutes non-stop and Philip’s video is living proof of the most enjoyable evening we all had. Sue Hill our neighbour in Diseworth, had a Tina Turner wig and Carol really, really let her hair down wearing that wig and singing and dancing. She loved the occasion so much so that we now have our own Tina wig for future occasions – little did we know that Carol would eventually need to wear a wig!! Carol’s happy days have, of course, been tinged with a deal of sadness. Her father died of emphysema in June 1996 at the, we thought, early age of 74. Since then Carol has ensured that her mother, Eve, was always cared for, eventually needing to be moved into a nursing home suffering from dementia. The caring and concern Carol showed for her mum had, at times, a very tiring effect on Carol until her mum died in March – co-incidentally she died on the second day of Carol’s radiotherapy for the nodule that had been discovered in her brain. We had to ask “what next can be thrown at Carol” but we now know!!!!!!!!! Carol’s cancer of the breast and the secondary in her neck was under control in February; all looked great – in fact Carol spoke to Ellie one evening when leaning against the radiator in the kitchen she said “Ellie, I am at last beginning to feel back to normal”. Her fabulous hair had grown back in November and she was generally a lot better. Alas, once the further radiotherapy had been administered in March her hair fell out again and, as you appreciate, this really, really distressed her enormously. But again she took it on the chin and got on with life. I just now wonder though, if her body was beginning to say “enough is enough” in view of the side effects as a result of the treatment, and then she had to face the prospect of more radiotherapy to combat the brain tumour and also the thought of continued treatment of some sort over the coming years. The radiotherapy didn’t do as much as it should have and Carol began to feel the effects of headaches and sickness and became quite unsteady very quickly. She was admitted to hospital on the 5 July and died very peacefully on the 27th at 8.10 in the evening – I was with her. My idea was that Carol should not know the prognosis which is something we never ever discussed – just had a very positive attitude towards the outcome and left Dr. Chan to do his stuff. You may have asked the question - Did Carol know – Was she aware? I felt sure that she didn’t know, but towards the end I began to think that she did despite the medication and disease messing with her brain. Eddie and his wife Judith visited Carol. Eddie said a prayer with her, holding her hand, and they were looking at each other – from that Eddie felt that she did know. I also now believe that she did know since she spent a lot of time with her eyes fixed on me when I was at the hospital with her and she also did a couple of things that were slightly uncharacteristic but especially loving. On the Saturday or Sunday before she died she said in a very, very quiet voice “don’t tell everybody until I’ve ….” And I didn’t get the final word/s which could have been “get home”, since she was under the impression that we were trying to get her home, or did Carol say “gone”. I am not sure but feel that if she did know she was trying to protect me from the excruciating stress of it all. That would be just like her, again showing her wonderful touches of love and caring – I will miss Carol for ever and it is hard to see how life can go on – certainly it can’t ever be the same without the one you love and adore and who has been taken so very young. I will miss enormously sharing our days, months and years ahead also birthdays, Christmases, get togethers and parties. Carol, all of us, will miss your beauty, lovely personality, wit, smile, laughter, caring and love that you have shown us all in many, many various ways over the years. But, Carol my sweetheart and darling, I have to say “Goodbye” until we are both eventually reunited. David