Extraordinary LIVES
PEGGY was a child of the Blitz. She was under instructions to find the nearest bomb shelter if the sirens went off, but would run from her school to the Anderson shelter at her family’s rented home in Teddington, South-West London, several streets away. Her mother would pray the doodlebug’s engine would not cut out overhead, which meant it was about to fall, but would feel guilty that others could be hit. The family were saved by that shelter when their home was partially destroyed.
Mum told me stories of growing up without an indoor bathroom and having to wash in a tin bath. On
Saturday mornings at the pictures, she was meant to look after her younger twin siblings, Peter and Pat, but would sit with her friend in a better section of the cinema. During rationing, her mother gave the children an orange to share. I don’t think Mum ever forgave Pat for eating the lot.
Mum was evacuated to the Rhondda, where the community welcomed her with love. She never forgot their kindness.
She always wanted to be a nurse and it became her life’s work. She trained as a midwife and became a district nurse, complete with bike. After a home visit, she would find fruit had been left as a gift in the bike’s basket.
She later worked as a school nurse
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with disabled children. She loved them and they all loved her. For 19 years, she was a children’s nurse on annual pilgrimages to Lourdes. Her career culminated when she was a finalist for UK Carer of the Year in 1990.
My parents met at tennis courts near Kingston Bridge. My father, Tony, was playing with friends when they saw some girls, including my mother, on the next court. The boys started to ‘accidentally’ hit balls into the girls’ court so they would have to retrieve them and could start a conversation. My parents married in 1956 and last year received a telegram from the Queen to mark their Blue Sapphire 65th wedding anniversary. I am their only son, and there are three grandchildren: Guy is a vet, Cressida has qualified as a solicitor and Harry is a care-home worker who wants to follow his grandmother into nursing. My father is registered blind and my parents would enjoy holidays at the Blind Veterans centre in Brighton. They loved going on cruises. At one lifeboat drill, Dad arrived at the muster station with his life jacket put on in a disarranged way. The other passengers looked on with admiration as she gently sorted him out. They wouldn’t have heard her whisper in his ear: ‘Darling, do you know what will happen if we do this for real and you arrive wearing your life jacket the way you were? You will effing drown!’
Mum dedicated her life to caring for others. It breaks our hearts that Covid restrictions meant Dad and I were not allowed to say goodbye to her before she passed away in hospital.
■ PEGGY ROSEMARY KILLICK, born July 10, 1932; died December 23, 2021, aged 89.