Extraordinary LIVES
JACKIE was older sister to me and our brother Tony, and my lifelong friend. She led a full and varied life as a hairdresser, nurse, artist, gardener, traveller, writer, poet, illustrator and craftswoman. She was born during World War II when our father Ronald was an aircraft fitter working on Spitfires and our mother Ray worked in a bomb factory. Jackie had her tonsils out at three when no one was allowed to visit her in hospital. She stammered so badly that her first teacher asked Mum to take her out of class because all the other children were copying her. Her artistic talents soon overtook academia. She painted, drew and illustrated her entire life. Wherever she was, she would be doodling a scene. At 11, she started working for the local barber, putting aside every penny to pay for the trips she loved. Aged 12, she saved my life, nursing me for a week while flu ravaged my body. She walked for a mile and a half from school carefully carrying a dish of lemon sponge and custard, which was the first food I could keep down. When we were children, we went for a long walk every Sunday for a
year, culminating with a 14-mile trip to Winchester. I said ‘Never again!’, but walking was a lifelong passion for Jackie. Even in the last month of her life, she would stroll two miles. Jackie always cut her own hair and left home at 17 to train as a hairdresser. After she qualified, she decided on a career change and trained as a nurse, working at the Royal Marsden in London,
Treloar’s hospital for disabled children in Alton, Hants, and at hospitals in Reading, Winchester and Southampton. Despite her busy working life, she was always an artist. She painted with oils and acrylics, on board, paper and walls, but her main talent was watercolour. She loved illustrating the beauty of the garden. Jackie travelled the world, having many adventures: she emigrated to Canada, lived on a yacht, nursed at a cancer retreat in Mexico, ran a pub in Scotland and was a gardener in France. Her love for others is shown by the donation of her corneas and the instruction at her direct cremation: ‘No flower is to be cut in my name.’ I set up the website jackieedwardsart.co.uk to display her artwork and to raise funds for Mountbatten Hospice in Southampton, where she spent her last days. n JACQUELINE RAY EDWARDS, born July 20, 1944; died June 20, 2020, aged 75.