You've been there all my life....all sixty nine years of it. You held me in your arms when I was just days old just before you moved to Slough with Eric and he started in the Bucks Constabulary. When I was four you brought young Eric up to meet his grandparents in the North, my parents. I had just started school and was learning to write the alphabet on a slate, you bought me a rainbow coloured writing pad and envelopes from Ashington Woolworths and said if I wrote to you you would reply. You did reply to whatever scrawl I sent and that started a correspondence that went on until a day or two before your last hospital admission. You guided me into the love of words and language to the point I have written several books for my own amusement.

At your Uxbridge home you played a silly little tune on the piano you had and encouraged me to learn and I did learn piano which you liked to hear me play and that engendered a love a music in me that has given me so much peace within me at times.

You showed me how to place fingers on a typewriter you had and I learned to type and that opened up another world of communication letter and with lesson plans when I moved into nurse education.

You were always supportive of me and we shared so much, not least a sense of humour at the most ridiculous things at times. The word Strawberries could set us both off giggling even last year....forty years after the event that had us both crying with laughter at the time. I'm actually smiling even as I write this at the memory of it

You were my sister in law but you were a Beaton before I was even thought about and were the sister of my heart as well as my in-law. The times I spent with you were amongst the happiest in my life and though events in recent years have prevented us from meeting physically our phone calls filled the gaps. You always said that memory is a wonderful thing and it is, and I have so many happy memories of times with you and of our chats, I can't think how many family memories we shared or how many world problems we have solved between us.

In so many ways you were part of the foundation of my life and you gave me so much to be grateful for and you helped lead me to making foundations of my own that still carry me through, and also an anchor in times that were difficult, you helped bring me safely to shore after some rough seas in my life.

You will always be 'My Dearest Duchess' and I'll always be the anonymous 'Prince of Fife'

I thank God for you Marge, for your patience, your compassion, your understanding and your support. I thank Him for the gifts he bestowed on you of kindness, honesty and integrity. What you did with those gifts was wonderful Marge and made you the person you were and I can only thank you for that, you were wonderful. All I can say now is God keep you in his arms and be happily reunited with those you have loved and lost and be there to welcome the rest of us when it is our time to join you.

Thank you Marge for just being you.

Love as Always 

David