Family Tribute from Jared Hay 28 October 2019

It’s hard to believe that it’s already a month since we lost Mum. To mark the moment, here is the tribute that I gave at her funeral, more or less as it was given. There were a few more spontaneous moments. Kev Murdoch also gave one on behalf of her grandchildren. Last Sunday, 17th, saw what would have been her 100th birthday.

May she rest in peace and rise in glory.

Introduction

Echo Jack’s thanks to our Christian friends in Bethany Hall – Mum had many friends here and Dad had many relatives!

Book of Liturgies from Presbyterian Church in the US: Funerals – Service of Witness to the Resurrection. Yes, this is a sad time, but also a time of hope. Paul: 2 Cor 4: ‘we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself.

¹⁶ Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸ So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.’

Outwardly, mum was wasting away – we could see it before our eyes. But the infirmities of our mortality cannot erase the work of the Holy Spirit in our inner beings, preparing us for resurrection.

Names and History

It’s impossible to sum up 100 years in a few minutes, so this tribute will be very selective. Mum was known by several names: Annie Woods, Annie Hay, Mum, Aunt Annie, Gran Hay, Grannie Annie and even Battlin’ Annie. She was born on 17 November 1919, the year of the Treaty of Versailles, which brought the Great War officially to an end. That means her family – Jared Woods and Mary Bryan, her father and mother, with her six brothers and sisters, were brought up in the aftermath of that war, came through the Great Depression of the late 20s and 30s, and WWII. No wonder those who survived were a resilient generation.

They lived in 8 Boyd Street – a two roomed house with a w/c, no bath, and a tiny kitchenette. The main room had two bed recesses, and they often rented out the front room, for some time to Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary Hay, before they left for Canada.

I don’t know how or when Mum came to faith in Christ, but she did, and was involved for the rest of her active life in Bute Hall, along with her sisters Jean and Nessie. These three sisters married the remaining three Hay brothers – John, Bill and Bert, Mum and Dad marrying on 22 March 1945.

They set up home with Granny and Grandpa Hay in 2 Crawford Avenue. There, Mum helped to nurse Granny Hay in her final illness, and for around two years coped with Grandpa Hay after a major stroke until his death in 1962. She had a lot of caring and home nursing to do, but she did it well, and to Grandpa’s satisfaction. At our holiday time, when two of his own daughters came to look after him, he told them that together they couldn’t do it as well as Annie on her own!

Crawford Avenue was the place where our family was formed – Jack arrived first – he’s so much older! – then me and then Moyra. Older members of the wider family will remember New Year gatherings, after the Ayr Conference, when the house would be full of Hays, Pickens, Hills and Andersons of at least two generations, for whom Mum spent days catering. The house would smell of ox tongue, boiled ham, Scotch Broth and a wide range of baking. How she did it I’ll never know! But these were good times and taught us the importance of family.

We moved to St Quivox Road in the mid 1960s and that home too became a place of rich hospitality. Sunday nights, Thursday nights, family, friends and visiting preachers would often sit round the table or in the Lounge, and Mum always had lots to set before them. When Papa died, I asked our Ian what he remembered of him. Ian said, ‘The smell.’ By which he meant the smell of tomato plants and geraniums and the like! One could say the same of Gran, except about baking. When Jack and I met up to chat about today, we were served a café latte (or milky coffee as we used to call it!) with a small piece of shortbread. I said to him, this will not be as good as Mum’s! While not a very adventurous cook, her baking was amazing – sponges, angel cakes, pancakes, oven scones, griddle scones, but above all, her shortbread. I have never tasted any as good, and never expect to!

As a very young woman, Mum served in Annie Fraser’s milliner’s shop in Prestwick, but during WWII, she moved near Glasgow as a worker in a munitions’ factory. Rather her than me! Well after the children were up and working, she returned to employment as Dad’s secretary and partner in the weighing machine business they had taken over. While they often had done things together, they now did almost everything together, at work and later in retirement. Not everything was sweetness and light all the time, but they were a couple who loved each other deeply and worked well together.

For Mum and Dad, it was important that we had a family holiday every year, usually a week on the Yorkshire or Lancashire coast, often visiting brother Jim Woods and his wife Margaret in Waddington, and sometimes taking a trip to Crawley, to see brother Humphrey Woods and wife Phyllis. Nearer home, while Nessie carried more of the load of looking after Grannie Woods and Johnstone, Mum was always in and out of Boyd Street too. The place was never upgraded in their time to avoid rent increases, so Johnstone went to Broompark Avenue or St Quivox Road for a weekly bath, whether he needed it or not. There was a real commitment to her family in a whole variety of ways.

That commitment was also shown to her children, in a whole range of ways, in good times and bad. She welcomed Lillian, Sandy and Jane into the family – perhaps Sandy with some reservations! But Lillian was more than a daughter-in-law to her; she was a friend, companion and often a carer for Mum.

Mum also played her part in Bute Hall over many years, not only in the kitchen. Often Annie and Nessie would visit women in hospital or ill at home, or those who had been bereaved. Even after Dad died, if she could be, she was there on Sunday mornings and Thursday nights.

Themes and sayings

Ok, it’s time to be more succinct. Here are some themes from Mum’s life that we remember and for which we give thanks.

Her smile: when I posted on the Friends of Berelands Facebook page that Mum had died and how grateful we were to the staff, so many of them posted about her smile, what a lovely lady she was, and the sense of contentment she had. You only had to say to her, ‘Mum, we’re going to take a photograph,’ and she would run her fingers through her hair and put a big smile on her face.

Her handbag: she never went anywhere without it, even in Berelands (staff mentioned it!) and it was a bit like Mary Poppins bag – there was an awful lot of stuff in it!

Counting cards: she would have been delighted with the number of folks to responded to the various Facebook posts, because every birthday or Christmas she would count them and let us know how many she had received. It was an annual competition!

Lurpak butter: occasionally she would go on a diet, but one thing she would never give up and that was Lurpak butter. We used to tease her that this was not good for her diet, but she assured us that the doctor had said it was good for her health and her weight.

Dominoes: anyone who visited St Quivox Road for any length of time, or just for an evening visit, could be dragooned into playing dominoes, and Mum played it so often that she was a Past Master. It was rare for us to beat her. Stuart Hay from Canada remembers being thrashed at dominoes by her!

Tea: Mum loved her cup of tea – never on its own, and never brewed for long. Dad used to call it ‘lighthouse tea’ because it was blinking near water. But even to the end she enjoyed her tea, and one of the ‘sacred moments’ as we visited her about a week before her death, was to help her sip her cup of tea.

Faith: Mum didn’t really enter into much conversation about her faith, but she absorbed what she was taught and put it into practice in her life. She was a disciple of Jesus who sought to practise love for God and neighbour.

What’s the Story: any time you phoned Mum, after a bit of a gap, this would be her opening gambit. Dad rarely answered the phone, this was Mum’s domain. She wanted to know what was going on in your life and took a real interest in all that was happening: health, events, how the family were doing, the lot. Whether she realised it or not, she bought into the idea that, as Christians, we are living in a Big Story that will end in New Creation.

You’ve just got to get on with it: after Dad died, Mum rarely talked about him unless someone else raised the subject. Moyra and Sandy were so concerned about that and they tentatively raised the issue with Mum. Her response was, ‘You’ve just got to get on with it. There’s nothing else for it.’ This was the generation who had seen all these horrific global events, and a woman who had experienced the sadness of miscarriage. She could either feel sorry for herself, or she could make her own way into the future.

Everything’s mixed with mercy: anytime we heard a really sad story, she always saw some kind of circumstance that mitigated the sadness, and this is what Mum would say. We experienced it in her life when Moyra died, that Mum herself was not able fully to take in the great loss that she had suffered. And in her own death, after months of constant decline, the mercy was the great compassion and care of the staff at Berelands, who loved her and will miss her.

Conclusion

As I said earlier, you can’t sum up 100 years in a few minutes and you will have your own memories of Mum. But these are some of mine. However, you may have noticed that there is a large gap in my telling of Mum’s life, and that is her grandchildren. They were all dear to her and she to them, and now Kev Murdoch, my Anglican nephew, is going to share a perspective on Mum’s life from the point of view of her grandchildren.