Vera Overy (15 Aug 1920 - 11 Oct 2018)

In loving memory of Vera Overy, who sadly passed away on 11th October 2018.

Vera knew very well the two extremes of great hardship and tremendous love throughout her 98-year life. That hardship came in many forms, starting with the poverty of the times scarring the world she was born into. That love came firstly in the unlikely form of soldier Eddie Overy, whose first advances she rejected, but with whom she was blessed with 44 years of extremely happy marriage. And that marriage created another enduring love for Vera when daughter Joyce came into the world. This love would continue some 28 years beyond Vera's loss of husband Eddie, but if any love is eternal, it is without doubt that it resides in all three to this day. If death hath no dominion, then here it has little but a name. Vera's spirit has migrated to that world where she will be forced to bear pain no longer, and it is easy to imagine her irrepressible nature at last free, happy and joyfully reunited with the man she adored so much.

Yet in talking about Vera, we must face that first extreme that was all too often a constant companion. Due in part to childhood malnutrition and a serious injury whilst in domestic service as a 15-year-old, Vera's spine became increasingly misaligned, resulting in extreme curvature in later years. Widowhood and physical pain combined into unrelenting, continual enemies that would have broken a lesser person. But Vera was a fighter right until the end. She was of a kind who bore their hardships with not only fortitude and courage but also great dignity. And that dignity was her gift - not just hers, but hers to give others too - for despite everything she would always ask after others, and send her love to them.

Little would she talk of her service in the Women's Land Army during the war - she who had worked in the fields by day, and fire-watched by night; she whose azure sky-blue eyes had watched the Battle of Britain being fought out above her; she whose native Kent accent was immediately picked up on by streetwise Londoners in war's austere aftermath; she who knew and felt the true austerity of those genuinely difficult times.

Devoted to husband Eddie, Vera loved unconditionally and was loved unconditionally in return. And it sustained both as they made their uncertain way through early married life, living in many different parts of the capital, yet always cheerful and the first to help others. Such love is not just a blessing, but brings blessings - daughter Joyce, in whom Vera would see, and sometimes speak of, husband Eddie's wonderful humour, insight and resourcefulness especially when times were hard. What she would not speak of were of course her own qualities that will live on in our memories of her to this day and well beyond it: a generosity of spirit; to do the right thing and expect nothing back from it; a tender-heartedness that could endure so much yet which never faltered, and that extraodinary compassion and empathy that truly knew no bounds. Simply put, it was the all too rare humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it.

That such a light in the darkness can be put out seems impossible to accept now, yet Fate determined on 11th October that we must say farewell to 'V'. It is, after all ,other people's turn again to have her close, and to feel her love once more. And we wish her this above all else: Be free of pain, be free of suffering, may your spirit soar and find its place in the heavens.

Vera - mother, grandmother, great-grandmother - was friend, listener, neighbour, samaritan, an angel in a turbulent world. We are weaker for her passing, much weaker, but know that they in the next are suddenly stronger, and it is their joy to behold her now. But of one other thing be certain: death has only name for we will meet again.