Tributes to Vicki from Family and Friends
My mother was a very tolerant person; a clear example of this can be found in how much of a little sh*t
I was; whether it was the fact I refused to eat my porridge because it was too runny or my refusal to wear shoes
after returning from Africa, I was always granted the right to make my own decisions. This is something I am
eternally grateful for as it taught me about taking responsibility for my actions, however great or small.
My mother had always wanted four children until I turned up; then she gave great consideration to whether
she had over shot the mark with the second one. This was entirely justified as I spent the majority of my first
few years of life screaming, crying & shouting in no particular order; things didn’t improve when I learnt to
speak. However with this tolerance, there was a great underlying current of love, compassion, comfort, support and
friendship.
Although Simone and I had a very close bond with my mother, it wasn’t until I observed the effect she was
having on other people that I started to realize there was something different about this person; she didn’t just
care about every life she came into contact with, she believed very strongly in the potential and underlying
goodness of an individual, and when she observed an injured soul she would take that soul under her wing.
My mother was also a great believer in magic, at the age of seven I was totally convinced my grandmother
was a witch, spaghetti grew on trees and I was nine before I suspected a giant rabbit wasn’t responsible for the
distribution of chocolate eggs. Looking back I don’t believe this was a simply a belief in magic,
it was a belief in hope.
My mother also had a knack for getting to the heart of a problem, I remember with great fondness overhearing
the end of a long conversation between a close friend and my mother where she summarised this young man's plight
in these words “Adam you just want to get your end away". "Yes Vicki, you're right” was the reply.
You will all be pleased to know that he did, and is far happier for doing so.
For as long as I can remember my mother always said she would have the words “she tried” on her gravestone.
This greatly saddens me as I don’t actually believe my mother was fully aware of, or gave herself credit for,
all the lives she has touched.
I believe the words “She succeeded with humility“ would be far closer to the women she was.
I am going to end this with a few short words of what my mother meant to me:
She was the light to my eyes,
She was the cushion to my soul,
She was the open hand whenever I fell,
She was the guiding force in the shadow of doubt,
She was the forgiveness without question,
She was the shelter in the storm,
She was the strength in my heart and the belief in myself,
She was forever was and she is for whatever will be
She was my Mum
When I think of Vicki it evokes memories of conversations that went long into the small hours of the morning
in a warm, welcoming home.
I am grateful for those times and for the kindness and understanding shown me by Vicki. Not least when I was in desperate need of somewhere to stay for what I am sure she thought would be a few days at most,
but which turned out to be a few weeks.
I feel I have benefited greatly from knowing Vicki and for the wisdom she bestowed upon me
- especially on the subject of love.
Above all this, I feel honoured to have known someone who was prepared to stare life, and ultimately death,
straight in the eyes and not look away.
Vicki
was not just a mum to Richard and me, but to children and adults
everywhere. “I’m just taking them under
my wing” she would always say. There are
many sitting here today that will remember a time in their lives where mum was
a mum to them – whether she offered them a place to stay, a bit of advice or a
long lecture over an evening with drinks; or maybe even just a look that would
let you know that she didn’t approve!
Chipped
nail varnish or drinking out of a can were big no no’s!
Many
times were spent around the kitchen table drinking tea with the girls – Mum desperately
wondering what we had all been up to the night before! Only a week or two ago Mum said to me, while
lying in St. Oswald’s, “you and Vicki got up to a lot of mischief that I still
don’t know about didn’t you?!!” Her mind was always ticking over!
She was
not just there for us and our friends but also for her kids from ACTS which played
a huge part in her life, even when they had left the school and started onto new
paths.
I will
now give you a very small insight into Vicki as my Mum. She was the most inspiring, loving and
devoted mum to Richard and me, but was by no means a Magnolia specimen of
motherhood. Mum always thought along the lines of “I’m not mad, everyone else
is just dull!” Here are just a few
examples of her way of thinking.
Mum had
me and Richard in
Mum was
a great one for installing a faith in us and ensured we were believers in Jesus…Not
necessarily because she thought it would make us more fulfilled children – but
because Jesus doesn’t let children come down the stairs after
Anyone who
knew her will agree that one of mum’s main aims in life was to put the magic
back into the hearts and minds of children everywhere. Whether it was tireless attempts at convincing Nick and Jenny
that Easter Bunny lived in Alnmouth, or
that she really was cross with Father Christmas for leaving muddy boot prints
all over her clean floor.
On one
occasion, during a regular trip around Safeways, a small child sparked mum’s
attention… he was shouting “hello……” down a tubular barrier. Mum quickly
and stealthfully positioned herself and the boy suddenly got an unexpected
reply of “hello little boy” from the tube. Mum was keen to continue with her
own amusement but the boy’s mother was a little alarmed at the mad woman and
quickly hurried her child away!
Robert Croft, a Business Acquaintance:
I first met Vicki Taylor when I was appointed Head of St Oswald’s School in Alnwick in 1999.
Vicki used to use the school hall for ACTS two or three times a week and over the years I came to know her well.
Vicki was a formidable lady. By this I don’t mean she was a Thatcher or a Queen Elizabeth the First.
No Vicki was more of a Queen Mum: warm, friendly, open, totally committed, and passionate about what she believed
in.
Mind you, rather like the Queen Mum, there were certain boundaries and it took an incredibly brave or foolish person
to cross them, as I shall share with you later.
Vicki’s beliefs were articulated very clearly on the ACTS web site:
Through Drama, Students learn many things, to work in a group, to work alone; to
listen, and follow instructions; to use their creativity and imagination; to
communicate through thought, action and words. They learn to explore their
feelings in a safe and controlled environment.
Not only did Vicki give the children a safe, secure environment she gave them self-confidence
and a belief that they could overcome all obstacles to succeed.
She was an inspiration.
And the children responded to her with love and affection.
Mind you she could be a tad difficult.
She was an incredible negotiator but so wonderfully nice with it.
Whether it be the hire of extra rooms, the provision of extra storage space or taking some of the St Oswald’s
children, who were members of ACTS, out of the school for a performance I was always left feeling that I had done
rather well, when, in fact, she always got everything she wanted.
And that was how it should be, because when the St Oswald’s put on a drama performance – where was Vicki even
though it wasn’t her show?
Helping with the make up, dressing rebellious angels and farm animals or, what she was magnificent at,
– crowd control of overly excited children.
Then, suddenly, incredibly, mysteriously – she would disappear totally into the background when her job was done.
She had such an
instinctive feel for what was right or appropriate.
Vicki was a true professional in every sense
of the word.
Yet her professionalism did on occasions cause me a few problems. Early on she came to me to complain
that staff were walking across the hall when ACTS was in progress. Just as she was about to impart some
precious nugget of the actor’s art, the children’s eyes would be averted to watch a member of the nursery staff
clomping across the wooden floor. Vicki made it abundantly clear that this was not on and would I do something
about it. So I did. I told the staff that the school hall on Thursday afternoons was to be regarded as something
akin to the demilitarised zone between the two Koreas. They understood and totally agreed.
Unfortunately I did not tell the caretaker or
the cook and this proved to be important as the kitchen backed onto the
hall. The following week, in the middle
of a vital scene, the aforementioned staff walked out of the kitchen and
embarked on what was to become a perilous journey across the hall.
Vicki turned and gave them a stare. Vicki was very good at stares.
It scared the living daylights out of me at any rate!
The poor unfortunates failed to heed the warning and carried merrily on.
Like a Spanish galleon under full sail Vicki bore down on them head on.
Contact was made half way across the hall.
I’ve never known what was said.
Suffice it to say, rather like two chastened schoolboys, blushing to the roots of their balding pates, they
returned to the kitchen, as S T Coleridge would have said ‘sadder and wiser men’.
They gave me hell the following day.
I’d like to close with a personal reflection.
Occasions such as this always leave me wondering about legacy, what we leave behind.
My father, who left school at 14, was educated in East London in the 1920s.
His headmaster was a man called Mr Moss.
Dad always talked about him with warmth and affection.
It was always apparent that Mr Moss had had an enormous impact on the person he was to become.
From reading dad’s school reports many years later I know it was a respect that was reciprocated.
Eighty years later I still treasure the memory of Mr Moss.
I think it will be the same for Vicki.
When the ACTS generation have children, or
even grandchildren, who are excited about taking part in a school play or drama
performance, I rather like to think that the ACTS graduate will sit the child
on their knee and say ‘When I was a your age, I had the most wonderful drama
teacher…’
In that way Vicki’s wonderful legacy may well last for decades to come.
So, the lights have gone out. No more will I hear that special voice, see those
dancing eyes. My Vicki, my lovely daughter at last out of
pain and free from that evil sickness.
We used to talk most nights, only did we miss one and that was when she was too
ill to talk. We would share a few laughs, and go down Memory Lane
Born in Kenya, she had a shaky start. As we lived in the middle of nowhere the doctors insisted
that Peggy come into hospital early. Every day I would drive down the treacherous jungle roads and every
day – no news. I arrived there one day after a particularly bad day. The car had broken down, and I was late.
I rushed into the room. Peggy greeted me with, “You have a baby daughter.”
I replied, “Do you know the carburettor fell off the car?” Vicki never let me forget that.
“Welcome to the world,” she’d say – a world where she was almost murdered by the Mau Mau.
Which was when I decided for us all to return to London. Vicki grew into the sweetest of children, every
father’s dream. She survived boarding school, and then on to the Arts Educational College, which is where she
got her love of theatre. Into a rebellious teenager, she bought a second-hand clapped-out minibus and decided
with a girlfriend to travel over Europe. Seeing her off I had doubts she’d make it to
Camden Town. Well, she’d made Dover. Undaunted she carried on. I used to get frequent calls from various garages
in various countries. Help! She eventually ended up in Florence where she got a job and stayed for a time.
Back in the UK she had a marriage that didn’t work out – then a second husband took her to South Africa where
Simone and Richard were born. Unlucky again, she returned back to England with the two children and after her
divorce was lucky enough to marry John Taylor and come to live in Alnmouth. At last she found contentment and
fell in love not just with John but also Alnmouth where she was to fulfil a dream and set up ACTS – a stage
school giving local children the wonder of the theatre. When she fell ill, having to close the school was one
of her greatest sadnesses.
At the end, surrounded by her family she slipped away and we all – John, Simone, Robbie, Richard,
his partner (Jodi), Ineke (my wife) and me. We held hands and formed a circle – a circle of love to carry her on
her last journey.
We had a little family conflab on Wednesday night to discuss this event. By then, this – I think, excellent –
format had been agreed: Vicki the mother, the teacher and so on. There was some discussion of what this section
should be called. I was loathe to call it Vicki-the-sister as I hope what I have written, though it includes that
element, is also broader than it. Vicki-the-woman was discussed, Vicki-the-life. It was only when I started
working on these little bits and pieces that the true title occurred to me. We’ve had Vicki the Mother, Vicki
the Daughter. I think this is: Vicki the Holy Spirit.
There was indisputably spirit in Vicki. And there was a certain wholeness. Personally, I also think there was
indeed a measure of holiness about her.
There is a clear trend today, of which this occasion is an example, to consider funerals a celebration of
life rather than a mourning of death. Witness the bright clothes we were all asked to wear.
Largely that is a trend I cheer. But, as with so many of today’s trends, it is one where care, I think,
needs to be taken lest the baby get thrown out with the bathwater.
Of course I celebrate Vicki’s life. My own would have been immeasurably the poorer without it.
But I must also take a moment or two to grieve.
I do not grieve for Vicki. Finally she’s out of pain.
But I do grieve for the, yes, grievous pain she suffered during these last too many months.
Unlike her, I make no distinction between pain and discomfort. Anything which causes distress is pain.
I grieve too for the pain of those who had to watch this person, whom they loved, live with pain.
And so much pain. And, sadly, even die with pain. I am sure my grief is your grief.
And I’m sure we grieve together for Vicki’s husband, John.
As we grieve for the other John in her life, her father, and his wife, Ineke.
To try to create league tables, as it were, of pain is to sully it. But I’m sure we can all agree that there
can be few pains greater than losing a child.
We grieve too for Vicki’s children, Simone and Richard, and for their partners, Robbie and Jodi and their
families. And we grieve for her brother and sister, for Daniel and
Susie, and their children,
and for Vicki’s wider family (her uncle, her aunt, her cousins) and for her step-children and their families
– and for her former husbands, for Chris and for Graham, and for their families.
I grieve for you, her friends, her neighbours, her colleagues, those who tended her and those she tended.
We all are in pain.
She touched so very many lives, Vicki. Mostly she touched them with fingers of love.
It is from the fingers of love that the tentacles spread of love, and it is those tentacles which keep the Earth
spinning on its orbit. And whether you believe that love to be a divine love or a secular love finally doesn’t
matter a damn. Because the whole point of that love is that finally it’s the same.
Lastly
I grieve for me. Really I’m very sad for me. She was the sister to me which – I
say to my shame – I was never the brother to her. She was an ally, a
sounding-board, a supporter. In our childhood she was often a look-out and a
confidante, frequently a co-conspirator and accomplice. Honesty obliges me to
confess that I suspect she was, more often than not, the Oliver Twist to my
Bill Sykes, and also that – I’ll bet more than once – she was the Timothy Evans
to my Dr Crippen. She was always the bowler, whilst I was scoring my centuries!
You
who loved Vicki, I urge you also to grieve for yourselves. Because within that
grief, paradoxically, you will also find the joy that it is Vicki. The
joy, I say advisedly, that is Vicki. And in that grief too you
will find Vicki’s true eulogy, and Vicki’s true legacy. These, these are just
words, noises made to mask what would otherwise threaten to be an unbearable
silence, birdsong tweeted away on the next gust of wind. Vicki’s legacy,
however, her true eulogy, that is the stuff both too abstract and too
big for words. That legacy, that eulogy, those are that essence of her which is
now so entrenched within our hearts, within our souls that that essence has
become absorbed by them, has become indivisible from them. Maybe it is even the
point of grief that we unearth the legacy of those we grieve for. It is that
eulogy, not this one, that legacy that you will find mysteriously consoling you
in disaster or cheering you in triumph. In Vicki’s case, I suspect we will find
that it is an essence equal to the task. Victoria > is, after
all, only Latin for the woman who conquers.
Okay, the celebration bit now …
If
I had to choose one thing about Vicki which defined her it would be her sense
of humour. In her case, it has to be said, that was probably as well a very
early part of her survival technique. Anyone who has to initial all their
belongings ‘VD’ and lacks a sense of humour just isn’t going to last too long.
It was always a subject of some bemusement to the two of us that our sister,
Susie, should have been given an innocuous middle name and not Teresa or Tania
or something. Personally, as Gregory, I was rather miffed not to have had Oscar
as the filling of my sandwich.
I
suppose Vicki and I would have been considered eccentric children. Vicki’s
favourite food was Marmite on chocolate biscuits. Aged about 7, when Vicki was
about 5, I was given a Davy Crockett hat, whose tail she cut off and which she
then stuck into the top of her jeans. For a few months, she would, whenever
possible, wander around on all fours, making meowing noises. Asked at that age
what she wanted to be when she grew up, she’d invariably reply, “A cat.” Maybe
she wasn’t such a bad judge.
We
spent a lot of time together, just the two of us, Vic and I. For a time we were
joined by the daughter of our next-door neighbours, Pella . I vaguely
remember pirate games. I, of course, was the Captain. No prizes for guessing
who it was who walked the plank!
Vicki
was formidably bright. Formidably. She had a lot higher IQ than I have, was
more conscientious and disciplined. Certainly as a child. But she was also
severely dyslexic. And at a time before that was recognised as being a
condition. She was therefore thought to be considerably less gifted than she
was. One of the reasons, I am sure, why in later life she took the job of
teaching so seriously – indeed took the subjects very seriously both of
pedagogy and education – was that she was the victim of its lack, the victim of
a manifest incompetence. She had so much potential that was never realised.
And
here I have to become a bit careful. Because I can so easily get so angry
around the subject. It enrages me to see potential stifled. But, in the
specific of Vicki, it’s not appropriate that I am so enraged.
I can also get very angry with
myself. I had the ability to go to university and never did. It is a deep and
lifelong regret. And yet had I done so, it would have been extremely unlikely
that I would ever have met Clara, my ex-wife and mother of my daughter. Without
Clara, I might well have had children, but I would never have had the daughter
I do have, Lyubov. And, without any question, Lyubov has been the single most
joyous part of my life. How can I therefore then regret my lack of university?
And
I know Vicki felt the same. There is nothing she would have swapped in her life
had that swap meant the absence in her life of either Simone or Richard.
Nothing. And whatever moans she might have had about her schooling and thus her
subsequent careers were always, always furnished with that codicil –
either openly or tacitly.
As
anyone will tell you who dared to suggest the tiniest criticism of either of
her cubs, as a mother Vicki was a lioness. It is no accident that a leonine
family is called a ‘pride’. And she had a leonine pride in her pride.
I
so hated apartheid that I made a big deal of it when she went to South Africa >. Do I regret that? Well, yes and no, if I’m honest. But what I
certainly do regret is that, for far too many years after her return, I did so
little to heal the rift. I now know there were times when she needed me and I
wasn’t there for her. I have begged her pardon for that in private. It is my
need that I now do so again publicly.
I
also need to beg her public pardon about her school. I had always thought (in
my sneering, condescending, big brother way) that the project was a little
part-time sort-of ‘sort-of’ affair, designed to bring in some additional
pin-money for Christmas or birthdays or whatever. Latterly I have had the
chance to see some of that sort-of work. Latterly, I should more correctly say,
I have had the privilege of seeing that work. You’ve already heard from
the premise’s headmaster, from former pupils. Their words chime far more
eloquently and truly than any of mine. But I have seen for myself the care in
that work, the concern, the thought, the application and adaptation. They are,
frankly, meticulous. This was work which could stand comparison with any drama
school in the world, and was born of a commitment to her charges which would
shame not only most of the world’s drama schools but most of its
educational establishments full-stop.
And
then she got sick.
Now,
let me be quite candid about this: I know nothing at all about cooking. I have
therefore no idea whether Delia Smith is a silk purse or a sow’s ear. I don’t
find the tiny bit I’ve seen of her personality too endearing, but then, in
common with most of her colleagues, I want to remind her that she cooks food.
She has not discovered the cure for AIDS, nor brought about peace in the Middle
East. Miss Smith has not even done anything about improving the nutrition of
our children. But I hear tell that Delia Smith has entered the dictionary.
‘Doing a Delia’ apparently means doing something or other which I would
probably remember better if I knew anything about cookery.
And
I’m sure that ‘doing a Delia’ deserves its place in our reference books. But if
it does, then so does ‘doing a Vicki’. And that is a phrase the meaning of
which I know very well indeed. ‘Doing a Vicki’ means facing fear with fortitude
and facing indignity with dignity; it means combating torment with laughter; it
means finding new layers of patience and resolve and stamina – new, as yet
undiscovered strata of them. It means taking altruism and concern for others to
an entirely different plane to that most of us mortals are used to. It is,
quoting Kipling more or less, forcing ‘your heart and lungs and sinew/ To
struggle on when there is nothing in you/ Except the will which says to them,
‘Keep On’.” It is finding both new depths for that quality called ‘courage’ and
new heights for it. Indeed ‘doing a Vicki’ makes of the word ‘courage’ an
understatement akin to describing Mount Everest as a ‘bit of a climb’. ‘Doing a
Vicki’ indeed is quite as much a triumph as any ascent of that mountain. More.
It is a triumph, in my book, considerably greater.
Nothing
in Vicky’s dying was easy – including, tragically, even her last moments here
with us. And yet any time I saw her or talked to her during these last
agonising months, I felt a quite extraordinary, almost an eerie, serenity about
her. This was a heroism that was far more than stoical. It was iced with the
mystical, seasoned with the divine. Even the most convinced atheist could see
it was certainly seasoned with the ethereal.
We
both suspected she’d die before my next book was published. I wanted her to
know that I had dedicated it to her. I sent her a copy of the email I sent to
my publisher with the wording. “To my dearest sister,” it read. “In health,
ineluctably Vicki …”
“What the … expletive deleted … does that mean?” she asked, rather testily.
“It means,” I replied, equally (it must be said) testily, “you were always you.”
“Oh, no, you’re so wrong,” she told me. “I was always trying to be someone I wasn’t.”
Well,
I don’t think that’s true. And if she was that kind of consummate actress, then
she was very much an actress more in the mould of, let’s say, Marilyn Monroe
than Judi Dench – in other words, an actress who would swamp a character rather
than one who was swamped by it. Despite her objections, I am therefore keeping
the dedication as it stands. Over the second half of it, I don’t think there
can be a murmur of dissent.
‘Adios’,
my darling sister. May the Spanish be right and may you indeed have gone to
God. Or if not at least to a place where you’ll be able to enjoy the peace you
so richly deserve. I shall miss you dreadfully. Thank you – and so much – for
having been such a huge part of my life.
The
full dedication reads as follows:
“To my dearest sister. In health, ineluctably
Vicki; in sickness, indeed Victoria.”
It
is the epitaph of a full life and a successful life. It is the epitaph of
someone so very much more special than she thought herself to be.