Winefride Douglas | July 2023

I was asked to lead 87 year-old Winefride’s celebration of life by my new friend, independent funeral director Alex of Thornhill Funeral Services. We were put in contact by a mutual friend, and this was our first time working together. Alex is exquisitely organised, super friendly and I can’t recommend him highly enough.

I love chatting to the family when I’m planning a celebration of life; it’s such a privilege to listen to the stories spill out and - in Winefride’s case - I soon discovered that she had a brilliantly rebellious side.

As a little girl Winefride would run straight up to her room every day after school to read. Her most treasured book was about a young girl growing up in Australia - a book that she borrowed from the library and, as she confessed once to her nephew-in-law Colin, perhaps never got round to returning…and it languishes in a pile somewhere with an 80 years overdue fine! She decided at that point that’s what she would like to do: have an adventurous life, living Down Under.

There was a stream near Winefride’s childhood home in Byker where she would diligently collect driftwood and fallen branches. It was by her reckoning that if she could build a boat and jump in at the stream, she could somehow sail all the way to Australia.

I imagine very, very few people achieve their childhood dreams but Winefride always knew what she wanted and had the gumption to make it happen. In 1980, in her mid-forties, headstrong Winefride left behind years spent in clerical work and moved to Perth to be a truck driver.

What a woman.

At Whitley Bay Crematorium, as we celebrated her long life, friends and family arrived to Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade. During the ceremony we had a moment of reflection as one of Winefride’s favourite contemporary songs played: Clown by Emeli Sandé. Her granddaughter Olivia had remembered how much she loved the song when it came on the radio.

At Winefride’s request there were no flowers at the funeral: she had poorly lungs and couldn’t tolerate them. I loved that even in her absence she was calling the shots…and getting her way. As well she should.

Whitley Bay Crematorium overlooks St Mary’s Lighthouse