Wednesday 7 May 2008

Ann.

Today we said goodbye to a very much loved and cherished friend and colleague Ann Campbell.

The chapel at the Crematorium on the West Road in Newcastle was standing room only for what was a very moving and personal celebration of her life.
She will be very much missed as we all continue to benefit from the legacy of her generosity of spirit and wonderful, enthusiastic, musical, bawdy, supportive, creative, Ann-ness.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I worked beside and with Ann Campbell from 1991 at the Collingwood Clinic and latterly Whitley Bay CMHT.
She had lots of musical interests which we shared.
Her humanist funeral today was sad but uplifting, and during her "wake" at the Cumberland Arms I heard Blackcap and Chiffchaff singing. Ann would have put some spiritual meaning to this, which would of course, have been very convincing indeed.

Sue said...

yes, I am already missing those kind of conversations. We use to like talking 'local & traditional' customs and folklore. So I naturally thought of her when a small bird (a finch) kept trying to get into my bedroom window at the buddhist monastery I was staying at (and to which she had an affinity and had introduced me) recently. I persuaded the small bird to fly elsewhere by drawing the curtain and went out to find a message left by a close relative of Ann, to say that she had been taken extremely ill.
I like to think the bird was telling me, first.

Tulpa said...

The Muses are sometimes called the Pierides, but others think that these were nine sisters, daughters of a man called Pierus, who dared challenge the Muses in a contest of song and, having been defeated, were turned into magpies, greenfinches, goldfinches, ducks and other birds.

One could interpret illness as defeat, but I will now think of Finches in a different way. Ann could certainly have been a muse.