From Barbara Coker - long-standing friend

This was the eulogy presented at Peta Pare's funeral service at St Laurence's Church, Stroud, Gloucestershire on Tuesday 8th August 2006.

PETA PARE - Friend Extraordinary, Mother Devoted, Adventurer Undaunted

Peta was always looking forward - no lover she of surprises, Peta felt cheated of the joy of looking forward if she could not know in advance of some pleasure awaiting her, whether a trip out for a day, or a visit to be made to her by one of her family or many friends in whom she so delighted, going to a concert featuring one or another ‘Old Chorister’ or a greater project to include her such as a holiday: the pleasure was enriched by the anticipation.

Even just before Peta’s final short illness, she was lining up the adventures: an invitation to Glyndebourne where Mark Elder is conducting Fidelio - Mark a very dear friend of Peta and Canterbury Old Chorister; then there was another invitation, to go round the gardens at Highgrove, also scheduled for July, and then in August there were plans afoot to make a return trip to Cornwall. None of these could come about, as things turned out, but just the looking forward and the thinking about the practicalities brought Peta pleasure and she would talk of them frequently.

In Peta’s philosophy, anticipation is part of joy - and for sure that includes her anticipation of the Joy of Heaven, itself a normal and natural part of her conversation.

Our tears must be for ourselves, to aid our grief which is itself a means of healing: but the tears are no longer properly for Peta. She is rooted in the Resurrection Faith and has passed through her death well prepared for the Resurrection Life.

To look briefly through the long life lived so well, Peta was through and through a CARER. Passionate to become a nurse, she found herself as a new recruit even before her formal training got under way, left in charge of a ward in Tetbury Hospital over night, while still herself a teenager not yet nineteen. Many of the skills and great care which Peta received so brilliantly in Cirencester Hospital through those final three weeks, she herself had begun so young to learn and to give instinctively, with insight to their importance.

Peta was proud of her rigorous training received at the Bristol Royal Infirmary; ever afterwards she was happy to extol the virtue of the “BRI” traditions. She became Theatre Sister there, but was keen to get into the real homes of patients - she became a District Nurse & Midwife, first in Bristol during the dark days of the Second World War, then in 1945 moved to Cornwall where as ‘Nurse Parson’ her reputation even to this day is legendary. That deep and tender devotion both to professionalism and personal caring marked Peta’s nursing as it did everything she undertook.

The very place in Cornwall where Peta arrived in late Spring 1945, St Blazey and Par, was the selfsame spot that just two months earlier Clive Pare had left: already then the Headmaster of the Canterbury Cathedral Choir School, Clive had spent five years in St Blazey with the choristers who otherwise would have been boarders in the Choir School, maintaining a full cathedral discipline and singing Evensong daily in St Blazey Parish Church, as it would have been rendered in the Cathedral - the plan was to have the Cathedral’s choir ready any day the War ended, to return to duties at once in Canterbury! A stained glass window in the nearby Par church commemorates that mammoth effort.

To this extraordinary legend, Peta walked in as if through a Narnian wardrobe into a surreal world. Canterbury Cathedral’s choir and Clive Pare had made a great impact on St Blazey and were soon to impact hugely upon her.

Largely with the help of Peta’s cousin, whose three sons in succession each were Canterbury Choristers (and who all are with us today), Peta met the legendary Clive. Peta and Clive were married by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher in Canterbury Cathedral on 30th December 1954.

Nurse Parson became instead the headmaster’s wife and matron of the Choir School, where ‘Mrs Pare’ was elided to the familiar and popular ‘Spare’.

Clive and Peta have two sons, Tim and Chris: and I do not remember a single day when both of you, Tim and Chris, were not upon your mother’s lips - she adores you both and was immensely proud of all you accomplish. Be sure her prayer and love will always embrace you.

So as wife, house matron, mother and friend, Peta is associated with fun, knowing how to enjoy life, and how to lead others to live life to the full. Perhaps two of her proudest moments can serve to highlight this. Through the final year spent in Canterbury before their move to Gloucester, Clive Pare served as Mayor of Canterbury - making Peta Mayoress. She threw herself into that with enthusiasm and energy, including the setting up of a charity shop to respond to an appeal for help at a time of African famine, raising a large sum in double-quick time; and the crowning joy of that Mayoral Year was the Visit to Canterbury City by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. A photograph taken at the crucial moment preserves Peta forever in a deep curtsey to Her Majesty as Clive looks on with full mayoral regalia.

Then in 1963 Clive was appointed Residentiary Canon of Gloucester Cathedral; a new era began for the Pare family. Living again in the lee of a great cathedral, Peta shared the life of this cathedral with characteristic energy - one of her legacies is the continuing band of people who welcome visitors to Gloucester Cathedral, a venture which has its roots in her inspiration. The second proud moment for us to ponder was just three year ago when Her Majesty the Queen came to distribute the Maundy Money in Gloucester Cathedral. Peta was honoured by the cathedral as one of their chosen recipients, in recognition of her former committed service there.

Peta’s husband and Tim & Chris’s father, Clive, died very suddenly in July 1973. Peta has lived out these remaining thirty-three years of her life with an undaunted enthusiasm and seemingly unabated yearning for the next adventure, and the next. Almost 30 of those years have been here in Stroud, and here she has contributed as wholeheartedly as ever to the life of the Church and us all.

One of the greatest tributes which can be paid to Peta is the fact that innumerable Old Choristers of Canterbury, who would have met her in their young childhood, have sustained lifelong serious friendships with this remarkable wife of their exceptional headmaster. Peta held each one in real affection and continued all her days to follow their lives and frequently great musical achievements, loving to attend concerts of Mark Elder now with the Halle or Harry Christophers & The Sixteen, or featuring Roger Vignoles or Stephen Varcoe, to name but some.

Tim and Chris recall especially the undaunted nature of their dear mother. Clive would say in any crisis: “Well, we must moisten the lips and start again.” That is an attitude which became Peta’s motto for Life, and which I can tell you, both Tim and Chris do live by.

Adventure and zest for life will remain the abiding memory of Peta, and her capacity to draw people in as friends and show them gently how to grasp Life with both hands will be her legacy to many. Across Gloucester, Stroud, Canterbury, & Cornwall and beyond, there are those of us who have had our own lives enriched immeasurably by our knowing Peta.

Whether caravanning and camping across Europe, going on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, cruising up into the Arctic just weeks after surgery, or enjoying wonderful fun in Cornwall on innumerable holidays there; whether catching up with friends the length and breadth of England or welcoming them into her home, Peta always gave and received to the full.

Now we shall listen to the first of her chosen readings for today, which will be read by a Canterbury Old Chorister who typically became a great friend of Peta and who has just retired as Headmaster of Malvern College. The reading is the very last page of the very last book in the Narnia Tales of C S Lewis, himself a past pupil of Malvern. In truth, its choice by Peta for this day of her funeral speaks volumes.