Winifred Maud Hooper, known to us as Grams, was born in 1912, the second of five children, three of whom survived childhood. From an early age, she was known as Winnie to her family and friends. When Winnie was 10, her mother, Maria Wallis, died in childbirth and six months later, her father left the family home to re-marry. Her grandmother adopted the three would-be orphans so that the children remained within the family unit. At 14 Winnie met and fell in love with Harry Hooper, our Grandad, at Henry Goods factory where she was an office clerk and they finally married 10 years later in 1936. Life together was not always easy. War parted them for some years, and when he returned Harry was no longer the romantic boy she had married. Jobs were difficult to find in post war Britain, and at times they knew financial hardship. Nevertheless, their love endured. Harry had eyes for no one but Winnie. And for her, he was handsome, strong and completely dependable and they remained faithfully in love until his death in 1993 after Winnie had nursed him for 8 years through operations for heart disease and cancer. In 1945 when their only child, Christine, our Mum, was born, Winnie found an additional outlet for her abundant love; Mum’s childhood memories include bluebelling in the woods; playing games of magic with Smarties; cooking home made cakes and biscuits; dress-making for Mum’s dollies, and later, as a skilled dress-maker, Grams made all the fashion clothes of the 1950s & 60s for her, then, teenage daughter. Her brother Fred and sister Hilda were always important people in her life. Fred sadly died in his 50s but the two sisters continued their close relationship into old age. In Hilda’s last ten years, the sisters were only a few seconds apart down the corridor from each other at Ashfield Place. The bond, and Hilda’s dependency on Winnie, which had begun in a parentless childhood, remained unbroken to the end. Winnie counted herself lucky that as their post-war circumstances improved, she and Grandad were able to holiday in a wide range of European and Eastern Block countries over the years; but Tenerife was always their favourite. And even after Harry’s death, she visited the Canaries, Madeira and Canada, going up the CN Tower in Toronto and enjoying a helicopter trip over the Niagara Falls at the age of 85 with Mum and Trevor. Her culinary skills earned her a reputation as an excellent hostess to both friends and family; and it was remarked over one lunch, “If you searched the length and breadth of Britain, you could never find a finer bit of pastry than this!” She was always solicitous and caring and continued to remain in contact with lifelong friends right until her death. In later years, it seemed that all our Mum’s friends loved her too, and she was known as Winniemum to Gail and Peter, and to Linda in America and was special to so many of Christine’s friends. Her wonderful carers, Rose and Linda, also came to love her as she cast her special brand of magic over everyone she met. Likewise, she came to love all those at Café Plaza where she lunched regularly, and who gave her kindness and consideration and made her life fun. In her son in law Trevor, she found a man to scold, tease, admire and share happy (and tipsy) afternoons across jugs of Sangria in Tenerife and indulged him by treating him to Cadbury’s chocolate on almost every trip to Morrisons – though she didn’t always get his jokes! In Trevor’s family, she found warmth and care and acceptance to which she responded by offering her own ever special love. Winnie’s love for us, her three grandsons, Justin, Stephen and myself, Simon, was as boundless as for our mother; she babysat for us, knitted our little childhood jumpers, played with us, took us for picnics at the seaside. She pushed our buggy round the shops on Saturdays and shared many of our childhood and teenage holidays. She took personal interest in our development at school and work, gave us weekly pocket money throughout our teens, and later welcomed, loved and took equal interest in our girlfriends, partners and my wife, and in her three precious, great grandchildren, Brandon, Ethan and Georgia. At 81, after Grandad’s death, she moved to Ashfield Place in Chislehurst where some of the most fulfilling years of her life took place and where she made new friends, and involved herself in the Ashfield Place community presiding over afternoon tea. She was a member of the gardening committee, the social committee and served as one of the Directors. Within six months of moving to Chislehurst, she had joined the Keep Fit group and the Townswomen’s Guild, representing the Guild at the annual conferences for several years. As age progressed, the kindness of those around her was so meaningful. Old friends may have passed on, but new and caring friends replaced them, particularly Joan and Lillian, who gave her love, companionship and security to the end of her life at Ashfield Place for which she was ever grateful. It was Grams’s desire in life to feel needed; and none could have needed her as much as her daughter, Christine. It is our Mum who will miss her the most; the Saturdays shopping they have shared every week of their lives, the holidays when they giggled like school girls together over glasses of wine; and the support and advice that Grams offered as mother, friend and confidante in good times and bad. To her daughter, Christine, no other person knew her so well, loved her so much or for so long, accepted her as she was, listened to her needs, suffered and cried with her, or laughed and shared her joys and successes, as her mother. To her, Winnie was a mother beyond compare; as perfect as any mother could be. So it is Mum’s words that sum up the memory of our Grams. “In life, my mother was an expression of love to everyone who knew her but most of all to her family. Now she has stepped across the threshold of life and death, leaving go of the loving hands of the daughter who adored her and the family who loved her, to once again be in the loving arms of her husband, Harry, and her sister, Hilda, who have waited patiently for her. She goes to them with all our love, though she will be missed beyond all expression and will never be forgotten.”