non sibi sed toti	Parsons Family and Friends

Emily Index Chapter One: Her parents Chapter Two: Growing up in Wicklow Chapter Three: The Years of the Great War Chapter Four: Boarding School Chapter Five: The Idyll Ends Chapter Six: The Morris Minor - and Poland Chapter Seven:January 3rd or My Journey to Warsaw Chapter Eight: Sewerynov 3 Chapter Nine: Love in a cold climate Chapter Ten: Escape with a baby Chapter Eleven: Dubliners Chapter Twelve: Post-war London Chapter Thirteen: In Metroland Chapter Fourteen: Dreaming Spires Chapter Fifteen: Sheffield Chapter Sixteen: Gold and Diamond Chapter 16: Gold and Diamond Note: The basis of this chapter at the moment is a few paragraphs copied from Martin's life story. the 'Gold and Diamond' of the title refer to Martin and Emily's golden wedding (1986) and diamond wedding (1996). The question of a retirement home had been in the minds of Emily and Martin for many years. While their own children were quite young they considered the advantages of buying a house somewhere, because parish clergy live in houses supplied by the Church of England and many of them find that as retirement looms they have a serious problem. Indeed Martin once half-seriously thought of buying an old railway carriage by the seaside. He inspected it with Emily and the children; probably Emily privately showed him that it would not be practical. When it came to serious house-hunting, the first choice was between Emily's native Ireland and Martin's native England. Since the children were in England and South America, that decision was easy. And since the children were in the Church of England ministry they were unlikely to stay in one place for a long time, so there was no pull to a particular part of England. With this in mind, they felt free to gravitate to Martin's family roots in Somerset, and they chose a bungalow in the village where Martin's own father was born and brought up, and where an aunt still lived: Locking, near Weston-super-Mare. They bought the bungalow in good time, and installed as tenants two friends from Northwood days. These were the days before house prices soared, and people of modest means, like Emily and Martin, could afford a pleasant place to live. They had intended to stay in Sheffield until Martin retired from his voluntary post with CMJ, but the tenants found a permanent house of their own, and so Martin and Emily moved to Locking two years early, while Martin was still travelling and preaching for CMJ. They were still young enough to immerse themselves in village life and make many friends, particularly through the church, and those friendships lasted as they aged and became more dependent on others. What made you choose Locking?' We have been asked that question many times. We could have gone back to Ireland, but that would have been to cut ourselves off from our family. My father was born in Locking, when it was a hamlet of 110 people, and he and my mother had retired to Weston nearby. We have various relatives in the area. Moreover the village church is one we like, and the Vicar at that time, Ronald Good, we knew to be a keen evangelical. To the great sorrow of all he died a comparatively young man, leaving a widow and three children. The evangelical tradition is carried on by his successor. Jack Mardon, whose evangelistic gifts are used widely in his capacity of Bishop's Advisor in Evangelism. It was perhaps natural that we should begin looking for a house in this area, and by the goodness of God we found exactly what we wanted. House prices at the time sound unbelievably low by more recent standards, and so we were able to invest in property! The bungalow had a name, 'Renwood', which meant nothing to us or our friends, so we just changed one syllable and called it 'Northwood'. No offence to Dublin, Blackheath, or Oxford, but of all the parishes we had been in Northwood seemed to be most suitable as the name of a house. We have since acquired a number, which we always use instead of the name. We had a short retirement holiday at Parcevall Hall, the Bradford Diocesan Retreat House, one of the most beautiful spots I know, and then got into an autumn's work almost as strenuous as before we retired. The change was that we could go to places together, which really does make all the difference. But the big event of the autumn was the return home on furlough of the Evans family from Buenos Aires. We were able to put them all up because we had spent the Church Commissioners' 'Golden Handshake' (at that time £1000) on putting two extra rooms and a second bathroom in the roof. It turned our property into a chalet bungalow, and four adults and three children were able to fit in quite comfortably. I had one of the upstairs rooms as my study/office, for I still had much correspondence in Simeon affairs. The four months' furlough was not all spent with us, and obviously David was away a good deal on deputation work, conferences, and helping in a mission to Oxford University. But we did see a lot of our family, and revelled in it all. We went to Heathrow to see them off, but I am not sure that this is the best procedure. On subsequent occasions we have said good-bye when they left for the airport. It happened that this time we could go straight on to Sheffield to the baptism of our youngest grandchild. Services for the flat-dwellers were held in the recreation centre, and little Deborah was baptized at an ordinary morning service in an improvised font. It was her own baby's bath, decorated with flowers, and the little mite was virtually immersed. Her father made the whole event into a powerful visual aid—as indeed every baptism should be. I indicated earlier that the marriage of our elder son, David, was in difficulties, and that summer he brought the four children to us for the holidays. I need not go into sad details, but it was felt that it would be better for them all to stay on, so for the next three years we had David and family living with us. Four children between ten and four years of age are quite a handful, and I am sure I was not always as patient as I should have been. But Emily coped marvellously, and it has been a joy to watch the children develop over the years. David had been priest-in-charge of St. John's, Woodbridge, for five years — which I think might have been extended — but he chose to resign, and took a teaching post about 25 miles from here to which he travelled every day, including Sundays as he was school chaplain. From it all I think I learned the supreme need of compassion, and also the power of prayer. Retirement has given us more opportunity to pray together, and in that united prayer our children and grandchildren — nine of them altogether — have a very important part. Charlie and Trevor remember how when they were living at Locking, Granny sometimes used to run through the generations when she was calling for them. Trevor writes: I can't quite remember the exact names, but definitely remember Robert often being there in the list when she was calling for Charlie. I think Grandpa used to do it sometimes as well. After the royal wedding of 1991, this always went together in my mind with Lady Diana Spender as was fluffing her lines and saying "Philip Charles Arthur George"! When the Evans grandchildren needed English secondary schooling, they came as boarders to St Brandon's, Clevedon and Monkton Combe. Martin and Emily acted as parents to them all, and they came to look on Locking as a second home. Martin wrote: The greatest partnership of all has been with my wife Emily. I have been conscious of her backing all through our married life, though in the busiest times there has not always been enough time to spend together. Now in retirement we have time for each other, and we find that in our marriage it is as it was at the wedding feast in Cana: the best wine has been kept till last. Another even deeper and more lasting joy was the return of Dorothy and David from Peru after 18 years away. Dorothy has told how, each time they returned to South America after a furlough in England, she wondered whether her parents would still be alive when they came back next time; and they must have wondered the same thing. They had seen a lot of Hilary, Caroline and Peter, who all went to boarding school within striking distance of Locking, Hilary and Caroline in St Brandon's, Cleveden, and Peter at Monkton Combe near Bath; but to have Dorothy and David in England was something more. They visited them and had them to stay and enjoyed it all thoroughly. Martin was always very openly proud of the achievements of his family; he once said that an acquaintance he met "dragged it out of me" that a son had done well in college; and he almost burst with pride at having a son-in-law who was a Bishop. And now not only his favourite daughter but his son-in-law Bishop were within reach. The ordinary daily round was quiet and ordered. Martin, who confesses in these memoirs that he once spent too little time with the family, now became quite domesticated, and washed up after meals enthusiastically. He was very well known in the village shops, as he combined his constitutional walk with the errand of getting groceries from the shop by the village green, or vegetables from Mrs Day only a couple of hundred yards from the bungalow. I don't believe that he ever learned to wire an electric plug; Emily, daughter and sister of engineers, was the practical one in those matters. Once while sitting with Emily in the sun outside the front door he said. "This is how I imagined retirement would be." As his sight failed he used a large print Bible for reading the daily passage as he and Emily joined in prayer after breakfast, and had a very bright light set up behind his chair. Emily, who sat opposite, must have been continually dazzled, but never complained, just as she never thought of grumbling that her chair, just by the television screen, gave her a poor view of programmes, while Martin had the good view. Robert and Elizabeth gave Martin an arm chair with a specially high seat, so that despite his arthritis he could stand up unaided. During his last years he never managed to climb the steep narrow staircase to his study in the loft conversion, but he had full bookshelves in the drawing room, in the dining room, and in the spacious hall. I was sorry when he had to ask me not to give him books as Christmas or birthday presents any more, because he could no longer see to read them. From the time of his operation I realised that I should make the most of my parents while they were alive, and so we settled into a pattern of sharing Sunday lunch and tea. I used to drive over from Bruton after leading the school morning worship, and arrive in time for lunch, which was invariably a chicken; as they grew older I found that I needed to do more of the cooking, too. Then Martin would suggest a cup of coffee, often saying: "That was a lovely dinner - so far!" And there would always be a sweet or chocolate to mark Sunday as special. Probably both of them would have a nap. The ritual of Sunday afternoon tea, with cake, followed at 4 o'clock, and then I used to have to leave before 5 to return to play the organ for evening service in Street. I certainly treasured those Sundays, and I think my parents enjoyed them too. Emily kept a diary, as her mother had. The diary for 1995 gives a picture of the daily round. Martin was the one who went out to the local shops. They had always loyally patronised the village shops and avoided supermarkets, and were well acquainted with Mrs Day of the market gardens a few hundred yards from their bungalow. Their loyalty was returned, and the grocer was glad to deliver telephoned orders when necessary. They stayed loyal to one grocer even when a friend from church opened a rival shop, only transferring their custom when the original shop closed. All the children visited them, and several of the grandchildren. Good friends from the village used to drop in, and the person who came to clean the house became a firm friend. Emily's 1995 diary also shows how her sight was failing. As the year goes by, the writing wanders over the page, as though she really could not see what she had written, or where she was writing it. On the 4th of February 1997 Martin stumbled and fell in the bedroom. He was taken into hospital, and the three children were called. Emily stayed with him in the intensive care ward to the end, and Dorothy was there with him when he died. He was exactly six months short of his 90th birthday. A deluge of letters and cards came to Emily. According to his wishes, John Moore preached at the packed funeral. His body was laid in Locking churchyard, where his ancestors also lie. After the funeral the members of the family had to return after a while to their own lives, but very fortunately David was able to move into the bungalow and travel to work from there. He was in his final year of teaching before retirement. After 60 years of happy marriage, and at 94 years of age, Emily's life was shattered. she did not want to eat, and had to be kept alive with Complan until her appetite, which had never been big, began to return. Good friends kept her company while David was at school, and David got a mobile phone in order to be on call. The one experiment with a paid sitter was not a success. Dorothy and Robert visited as often as they could, and Dorothy stayed for a week to give David a break. Gradually Emily recovered a little of her zest for life. She allowed herself to be taken to the seaside at Uphill, or out to tea. Dorothy noticed a small milestone when Emily told her that 'we' had tea in the garden. Before that she had been so wrapped up in grief and loneliness that it was 'I had tea.' She herself remarked that she had never wept for Martin. This was certainly not for lack of feeling; rather she had all her life schooled herself not to give way to her private feelings. She slept a good deal of the day. Tapes of books, and talking newspaper versions of The Christian Herald and other papers were arranged, but her concentration for such things was very short. She liked to hear the reading of the Bible each morning and to join in prayer. There were days when her health gave rise to alarm, and twice Dorothy and Robert came down in haste, only to find her on the mend. On the last day of October they were called again, and came to be with their mother. Once again she seemed to be recovering, and they went home. But during that evening Emily found it hard to get her breath, and a strange duty doctor came and diagnosed pneumonia. She probably knew she had not long to live, and said "I've had a very happy life." Shortly after midnight David, feeling helpless to do more, resolved to take her in to hospital. She went to prepare, and when she came from the bathroom she stumbled. David caught her and lifted her up - she weighed hardly anything - and carried her to the car; but before they had reached the car she was gone. Robert put it like this: She felt David lift her up, and then the angels took over. Previous chapter