15 Years since Christine died

My first wife, Christine died 15 years ago today of malignant melanoma at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

I came across my notes for the valedictory speech I made when I conducted her funeral and in a fit of melancholy, have reproduced a large part of it below.

We met when she was 16 and I was 17. By the time that she died, shortly after her 30th birthday, I had known her for almost half of my life.

Chris was born in Windsor on 7 March 1962 to Harold and Trudi Farrar

In 1963 she went with her parents to Hong Kong where they spent 4 years and where her sister Sandra was born. They returned to England in 1967 so that Chris could start school here. Shortly after their return her brother Graham was born.

Chris had a fairly distinguished school career. She obtained 11 'O' Levels and 3 'A' Levels. Her 9 As and 2 Bs at 'O' Level, certainly outstripped my rather mediocre performance. Blonde she may have been - dumb she most certainly was not.

She was also a very talented artist - although she would deny this and, with her customary air of self-deprecation, would say that all she could do was copy things from pictures. All I can say is that, in that case, she was a very accomplished copier.

We met because I had been the Third Murderer and she was the best friend of a witch. Of course, I refer to the 1978 RGS High Wycombe production of 'the scottish play'. The first time I actually set eyes on Chris, she had a bag over her head. I was supposed to be taking a picture for Wycombe Action Group - a schools charity organisation, of which she was a member. As those of you reading this who knew her will know, Chris hated having her photograph taken - she had an abiding concern that she was in fact deeply unattractive and that those of us who disagreed were all profoundly mistaken. So, because she hated having her photograph taken, she decided to put a bag over her head. Photography was, and still is, one of my great passions - this made it even more miraculous that we ever got together. I pretended to get cross and told her to take the bag off her head - not because I cared whether or not the photo looked silly, but because if what was under the bag was anything like the bits I could see, I was keen to have a closer look. She reluctantly removed the bag and I was instantly smitten. Nothing further happened on that occasion, but on 23 December 1978, at a church hall disco, that incident gave me an opening gambit which I would otherwise not have had. The rest, as they say, is history.

We didn't exactly rush into marriage but we both knew early on that that is where we were headed. The first sign came one Saturday lunchtime in High Wycombe. Chris had a Saturday job in Mothercare and I had a Saturday job in Hepworths. We used to meet at lunchtimes and wander around the shops. We came out of Marks & Spencer and just as we went to kiss goodbye the parish church bells pealed for a wedding - we didn't say a word, but we exchanged a glance that would have filled 10 volumes.

Our romance flourished and eventually the time came to go off to university. We went to separate universities, Chris to Birmingham and I to Cambridge. We made no promises at that stage - we decided to see if it would last. It did.

We finally got engaged in Kenya in 1983. Under a palm tree on the sea shore at Mombassa. Me on one knee, Chris wrapped in a Kanga. Unknown to Chris, my camera was primed to take a picture at the vital moment. She said yes and the smack I got for taking the picture, only stung for a short time. Although I can feel it again right now.

Even then we still didn't rush to get married. It took us over 2 years more. Mostly because we had no money. I went to Bar School and was still a pupil barrister when we did finally get married on 20 July 1985 - a beautiful day which I shall always remember as one of the happiest moments of my life.

So far as her working life was concerned, Chris had a number of different jobs after university.

She started off by selling chocolates in a store in Knightsbridge - thus began her long and abiding love affair with Belgian chocolate. She was poached from there by one of the regular customers and went to work as assistant manager of a Bond Street Jewellery Store. There then followed a period as a trainee accountant and then jobs working in the finance departments of a large firm of Estate Agents and a property development company, Glengate Holdings plc.

Chris did not enjoy work. She had one major ambition in life - to retire and have babies. Babies turned out to be something at which she was extremely accomplished. To start our family as early as possible turned out to be one of the best decisions we ever made. Chris had two very easy births producing two wonderful children, Emily and Charlotte. She adored them and although her time with them was so short, she showed herself to be a truly wonderful mother to them.

Notwithstanding her illness, Chris persistently refused help with looking after the children, she was determined to do what she could for them while she was still alive. She continued to look after them unaided until about a fortnight before she died - even though, at times, she was very weak and, at times, she was in great pain. She took them to playgroups and pre-school every day, she took them shopping on her own - an extremely difficult task. She took them on outings to Chessington World of adventure and Windsor Safari Park.

Some of you will remember the 3 birthday parties which she organised and ran for the children. Nobody else was allowed to help in the planning and few of us were allowed to assist on the day. She handled them with comsummate skill - and I for one shall never forget them. Although they will have few, if any, real memories of Chris, they will never be allowed to forget their mother and what they meant to her and what she meant to them.

Nobody should underestimate the pain and anguish which Chris suffered in the last year of her life. We will never know just how much pain she did suffer - she would hardly ever admit to being in pain at all, let alone its extent. She persistently refused to accept painkillers, hating the lack of control they gave her because of the drowsiness they caused. At Christmas 1991, she sat at the Chambers' Christmas Party looking a million dollars and talking cheerfully, while surreptitiously taking breakthrough doses of morphine when the pain became too much.

She never ever gave in to this most wretched of diseases and her determination to not let it win was second to none. Although there are many instances I could mention, perhaps the most poignant came just a few days before she died. By then, she was already desperately ill and had eaten virtually nothing for a week. She decided that she was going to eat some supper with us. As those of you who knew her well will know, there are 2 important things to know about every decision made by Chris: (1)They were comparatively rare as she was almost never able to make one; and (2) when she did, it was a thing cast in stone and could not be amended without leave from her. We were having a Chinese takeaway. She decided that she was going to eat a piece of chicken satay. She sat at the table, a glass of water to one side, the painkillers having dried up her saliva and a bowl on the other for just in case. She picked up the chicken satay. One tiny nibble at a time, each washed down with a mouthful of water, she began the task. It took her almost an hour to do, but she did it. The disease may have beaten her body but it never ever conquered her mind.

In the end, she became very tired and physically unable to keep up the fight which her mind was waging. Her pain, for once controlled by painkillers, I sat with her in the early hours of Friday 29 May 1992, as she peacefully slipped away.

Chris may be gone, but our memories of her will never die. Time has healed some of the pain and sorrow which we feel, but her most incredible fortitude, her bravery and her strength of character will be a lesson which, I at least, shall carry with me forever.

Apart from being brave and strong, she was a beautiful young woman, a devoted wife and mother - full of the joys of life, who was taken from us so undeservedly. I am sure that for all of us who knew her, the world is a blacker place without her in it.

Her funeral concluded, at her express request, with the Louis Armstrong hit - "What a Wonderful World". There was not a dry eye in the house. I still cry almost every time I hear it.